Donnelly/Curriculum Vitae 1

Kara Lee Donnelly

kdonnel3@nd.edu

University of Notre Dame 1084 Woodward Ave
Department of English South Bend, IN 46616
356 OShaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556 978-808-0590

EDUCATION
Ph.D. Candidate in English, University of Notre Dame, expected defense April 2015
Graduate Minor in Irish Studies
Candidacy Examination passed with distinction, 2012

DISSERTATION: The Booker Prize: Literature, Britain, and the World, 1968-1999
DIRECTOR: Declan Kiberd
COMMITTEE: Jim Collins, Matthew Wilkens, and Clair Wills

M.A. in English, New York University, 2010
THESIS: No One Even Knows I Have a Story: Remnant Women in Contemporary
Irish Novels
DIRECTOR: John Waters

B.A. in English and French, Cum Laude and Honors in English, Wellesley College, 2006
THESIS: Saying Things that Should Be Said: Voice in Roddy Doyles Novels
DIRECTOR: Margery Sabin

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
Presidential Fellowship, University of Notre Dame (2010-2015)
Emory MARBL Short-Term Fellowship (2014)
Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award (2014)
Zahm Research Travel Grant (2012; 2013)
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts Graduate Student Research Award (2012; 2013)
Mary Ann Youngren Award for Critical Reading (2006)

PUBLICATION
Metafictions of Development: The Enigma of Arrival, You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town, and
the Place of the World in World Literature. Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49 (2014): 63-
80.

CONFERENCE ACTIVITY
Panels Organized
Creating Contemporary Canons. American Comparative Literature Association Conference,
Seattle, WA. March 26-29, 2015.
Donnelly/Curriculum Vitae 2
Cultural Institutions and Postcolonial Literatures. Co-organized with Peter Kalliney. Louisville
Conference on Literature and Culture, Louisville, KY. February 26-28, 2015.

Papers Presented
J.G. Farrells Double Vision of Empire. American Conference for Irish Studies and Canadian
Association for Irish Studies joint conference, Dublin, Ireland. 11-14 June 2014.

The Booker Prize and the Commodity Aesthetic. American Comparative Literature
Association Conference, New York, NY. 20-23 March 2014.

Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist: How Salman Rushdie and the Booker Prize
Invented High-Pop Postcolonial Literature. Modern Languages Association Convention,
Chicago, IL. 9-12 January 2014.

Selling Trauma. American Conference for Irish Studies Mid-Atlantic, Rochester, NY. 15-16
November 2013.

The Frightful Mechanics of Authorship: Exhaustion and the Global Literary Marketplace.
Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present 5, Detroit, MI. 3-6 October 2013.

Writing and Shopping in Anne Enrights The Gathering. American Conference for Irish
Studies, Chicago, IL. 10-13 April 2013.

V.S. Naipaul, the Booker Prize, and the Formation of World Anglophone Literature. American
Comparative Literature Association Conference, University of Toronto. 4-7 April 2013.

A Portrait of the Artist and the Postcolonial Bildungsroman. Hybrid Irelands, Notre Dame, IN.
30 March 2012.

Anxiety after Empire. Louisville Conference for Literature and Culture after 1900, Louisville,
KY. 24 February 2012.

No One Even Knows I Have a Story: Remnant Women in Contemporary Irish Novels.
American Conference for Irish Studies, State College, PA. 5-8 May 2010.

Davids Story: Global Text, Local Harm. The Cape and the Cosmopolitan: Reading Zo
Wicomb, Stellenbosch, South Africa. 10 April 2010.

The Pram: Gaelic Gothic for the 21
st
Century. American Conference for Irish Studies West,
Los Gatos, CA. 16-18 October 2009.

(Im)possible Speech: Misreading the Body in The Woman Who Walked into Doors. University
of Virginia Graduate Conference, Charlottesville, VA. 21 March 2009.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
University of Notre Dame English Department
Donnelly/Curriculum Vitae 3

Instructor of Record for Prize Winning Literature, Spring 2014
Fulfills literature requirement. Reading list includes literature that won the Nobel
(Rudyard Kipling, Rabindranath Tagore, Wole Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz), the Pulitzer
(Gwendolyn Brooks, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop), the Booker (Kazuo Ishiguro,
Yann Martel). Focus on literary analysis and on how aesthetic and social values change
over time.
Enrollment: 19

Instructor of Record for World Literature in English, Spring 2015
Fulfills literature requirement. Reading list includes Kamau Braithwaite, NourbeSe Philip,
James Joyce, Zo Wicomb, Salman Rushdie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Derek Walcott, Wole
Soyinka, and Brian Friel. Focus on literary analysis, especially genre and language use,
and on modes of accessing and contextualizing global literature.

Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Shakespeare, Fall 2103
Experimental course using iPad technology to teach Shakespeare. Responsibilities
included leading discussion section and guest lecturing on postcolonial adaptations of the
Tempest.

University of Notre Dame Writing Program

Writing and Rhetoric, AY 2011-2012
Required course for first year students. Focus on academic argumentation and writing
processes.
Enrollment: 14 per section

Other Teaching Experience

Teach For America, 2006-2008
Taught middle school English and language arts in the New York City public schools.

ACADEMIC SERVICE AND EXPERIENCE
Service to the Profession
Senior Review Editor, Braec: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies (2013- )
Editorial Board member, Braec: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies (2012- )

Service to the University
President, English Graduate Student Association, University of Notre Dame (2013-2014)
Vice President, English Graduate Student Association, University of Notre Dame (2012-2013)
Graduate Writing Tutor, Writing Center, University of Notre Dame (2012- )

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Comparative Literature Association
American Conference for Irish Studies
Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
Donnelly/Curriculum Vitae 4
Modern Language Association

LANGUAGES
Proficient in French. Basic reading in Irish.