Alison Donnell

After leaving secondary school she was educated at UWC Atlantic College, and at the same time her parents moved to India.[8] She went on to obtain her bachelor's degree in English and American literature from Warwick University and her PhD from the Centre for Caribbean Studies.[9][10]

Professor Donnell is the leading researcher of the Leverhulme Trust funded project Caribbean Literary Heritage: Recovering the Lost Past and Safeguarding the Future.[11] She has been awarded a number of research grants and fellowships, including a visiting Hurst fellowship, Department of English, Washington University[5] and the James M. Osborne Fellowship in English Literature and History, Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.[12] In 2013 she was awarded a research fellowship by the AHRC[7][13] to research sexual citizenship and queerness in the Caribbean, addressing the criminalization and intolerance of homosexuality in the region by contesting heteronormativity rather than homophobia. Donnell's work uses literature to show how sexual pluralism and indeterminacy are part of the Caribbean cultural world.[14][15][16] She worked with CAISO, the Caribbean IRN and the IGDS at UWI on a series of public events called Sexualities in the Tent.[17][18][19]

Her interests in literary histories and archives has led to an International Network led by a group of colleagues the University of Reading and funded by the Leverhulme Trust to help retain authors' papers and manuscripts with a particular focus on Diasporic Literary Archives.[3][20]

Her archival interests have also led to her development and directorship of a Doctoral Training Programme in Collections-Based Research at the University of Reading.[21] This postgraduate training provides a pathway to a PhD, with a focus on museum and archives skills training and placement opportunities.[22]

She was a founding and joint editor of the quarterly journal Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies from 1998 to 2011, and has an editorial role in The Journal of West Indian Literature and is a Trustee of Wasafiri magazine.[5][23]

Donnell has co-edited two major textbooks in the field of anglophone Caribbean literature. The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature (1996) recovered many lesser-known literary works, especially those published before the so-called "boom" of the 1950s.[24] The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature (2011) brings together three generations of critics to map a scholarly reassessment of the field.[4]

Donnell’s academic publications on recovery research of the poetry of Una Marson, and her edited collection of Marson’s Selected Poems (part of Peepal Tree's Caribbean Classics series), have been particularly significant. Although celebrated as a pioneering black Jamaican feminist and nationalist, Marson’s literary works were often dismissed for mimicking European style. Donnell has repeatedly argued that Marson’s poetry powerfully represents her complicated relationship to both nationalism and feminism[25][26]

Donnell's essay "Visibility, Violence and Voice? Attitudes to Veiling Post-11 September" appeared in Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art arranged by David A. Bailey.[27] The essay gained attention because of its discussion of the veil as a symbol of political and cultural identity in the Muslim world. Donnell discusses how the West's concentration on the veil diverts attention from other issues such as legal rights, education and access to healthcare, connecting to debates within Islamic feminism.[28]

• Donnell, Alison; Bucknor, Michael A. (2011). The Routledge companion to Anglophone Caribbean literature. Abingdon, Oxon New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415485777.
• Marson, Una (2011). Selected poems. Leeds, UK: Peepal Tree. ISBN 9781845231682.
• Donnell, Alison (2006). Twentieth-century Caribbean literature: critical moments in Anglophone literary history. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415262002.
• Donnell, Alison (2002). Companion to contemporary Black British culture. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415862509.
• Donnell, Alison; Polkey, Pauline (2000). Representing lives: women and auto/biography. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312226671.
• Donnell, Alison; Welsh, Sarah Lawson (1996). The Routledge reader in Caribbean literature. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415120494.
• Donnell, Alison (2003), "Visibility, violence and voice? Attitudes to veiling post-11 September", in Bailey, David A.; Tawadros, Gilane (eds.), Veil: veiling, representation, and contemporary art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 122–135, ISBN 9780262523486.

Reprinted in: Donnell, Alison (2010), "Visibility, violence and voice? Attitudes to veiling post-11 September", in Jones, Amelia (ed.), The feminism and visual culture reader (2nd ed.), London New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780415543705.

• Donnell, Alison (November 2012). "Caribbean Queer: new meetings of place and the possible in Shani Mootoo's Valmiki's Daughter". Contemporary Women's Writing. 6 (3): 213–232. doi:10.1093/cww/vps024.
• Donnell, Alison (2011). "Una Marson and the fractured subjects of modernity: writing across the Black Atlantic". Women: A Cultural Review. 22 (4): 345–369. doi:10.1080/09574042.2011.618658.
• Donnell, Alison (1999). "Dressing with a difference: Cultural representation, minority rights and ethnic chic". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 1 (4): 489–499. doi:10.1080/13698019900510781.
• Donnell, Alison (2002). "Nation and contestation: Black British writing". Wasafiri. 17 (36): 11–17. doi:10.1080/02690050208589781.

• "Alison Donnell's publications". English Literature, University of Reading.