DONNA MITCHELL
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow in English
Department of English Language and Literature
Mary Immaculate College
University of Limerick
Ireland
Email: [email protected]
Direct Line: +35361204935
EDUCATION:
2014: Doctor of Philosophy (English)
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
Thesis Title: ‘From Dolls to Demons: Exploring Categorisations of the Female Figure in
Gothic Literature through a Selection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Texts’
2009: Master of Arts in Modern English Literature
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
Dissertation Title: ‘The Gothic Hero’s Search for Identity: Modern Representations of the
Gothic Hero’
2008: Bachelor of Arts in English & Media
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
EMPLOYMENT & TEACHING:
September 2015 – Present: Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow in English for the Department
of English Language & Literature in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
-
Course design and deliverance of various literature and literary theory lectures to
students on the undergraduate B.A. and B.Ed. programmes;
Assessment and examination of these groups;
Assistance and guidance of students whenever necessary;
Supervision of undergraduate dissertations;
Departmental administration;
Research.
1 of 6
Donna Mitchell
September 2011 – June 2015: Tutor for the Department of English Language &
Literature in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
-
-
Full responsibility for multiple first-year, second-year, and fourth-year English tutorial
groups on the undergraduate BA programme;
Preparation of tutorials on academic writing skills, literary theory, Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama, twentieth-century American and British drama, modern Irish drama,
the Irish novel, and Irish poetry and prose;
Design and supply of additional notes and deliverance of further presentations on the
above sections of these English modules;
Encouragement (For active participation from all students in each tutorial session);
Assessment and grading of students’ tutorial attendance and discussion;
Assessment and grading of midterm assignments and end of term exam papers.
December 2014 – April 2015: Research Assistant for the Institute for Irish Studies in
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
-
Research of various centres and institutes for Irish Studies and classification of their
specific investigative areas;
Documentation and categorisation of institutes with shared research areas;
Documentation of contact information for each centre and institute for Irish Studies on
a worldwide scale;
Creation of a database of these contacts in order to unite scholars in future
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects on Irish Studies.
PUBLICATIONS:
Book Chapters
2017: ‘Gender Trouble in Feminist Dystopian Fictions’ in The Dark California: Millennial
Concerns in the Contemporary Pop-Cultural Readings of California. Edited by
Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice and Agata Zarzycka.
2016: ‘Patchwork Girls: Reflections of Lost Female Identity in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever
Yours’ in Posthuman Gothic, University of Wales Press. Edited by Anya Heise-von der
Lippe.
2013: ‘The Madonna and Child: Re-evaluating Social Conventions through Anne Rice’s
Forgotten Females’* in Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic,
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan.
(*Shortlisted for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for non-fiction
in 2013)
2 of 6
Donna Mitchell
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
2016: ‘Doll as Momento Infanti’ in ‘Expanding the Scope of Horror’; Special Journal Issue of
Interdisciplinary Humanities, September 2016 (Guest Editors: Edmund Cueva and
William Novak).
2015: “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation’: Mother as Monster in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein’ in The Journal of Dracula Studies: The Horror Classics Issue,
July 2015 (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Journal: forthcoming issue).
2014: “If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of you’: A Female
Personification of Death in Irish Gothic Literature’ in Writing from Below: Death and
the Maiden Special Issue, December 2014, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Online Journal:
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/wfb/article/viewFile/450/505).
2014: ‘Of Monsters and Men: Absent Mothers and Unnatural Children in the Gothic ‘Family
Romance’’ in Otherness: Essays and Studies 4.2, April 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Online
Journal: http://www.otherness.dk/otherness-essays-studies-4.2/).
Other Publications
2013: ‘The Monstrous Feminine: A Portrait of Female Sexuality in Irish Gothic Literature’ on
the Sibéal Irish Postgraduate Feminist & Gender Studies Network, August 2013,
(http://sibealnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-monstrous-feminine-portraitof.html).
CONFERENCE PAPERS:
2016: “Watching, watchers, watchers. We’re all watching each other’: The Divided Self and
Feminine Madness’,* ‘Asylums, Pathologies, and the Themes of Madness
Symposium’, University of Stirling, 16th January 2016. (*Winner of the Wellcome
Trust Bursary)
2015: ‘Visible Categorisations of Female Identity in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours’, ‘(In)
visible Lines’ Sibéal Feminist and Gender Studies Network Conference, University of
Limerick, 20th & 21st November 2015.
2015: “This face is all that I have to offer and it isn’t even mine … It is the property of the
School, of the Zone, of my future Husband’: The Importance of Beauty in Young Adult
Dystopian Fiction’, ‘Legacies and Lifespans: Contemporary Women’s Writing in the
21st Century – The 10th Anniversary Conference of the CWWA’, University of
Brighton, 17th October 2015.
3 of 6
Donna Mitchell
2015: ‘The New Eves: How the Cult of Youth and Social Perceptions of Natural Beauty are
reflected in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours’, ‘Women and Ageing: New Cultural
and Critical Perspectives’, University of Limerick, 20th - 22nd May 2015.
2015: ‘Patchwork Girls: Reflections of Lost Female Identity’, ‘The Literature of Loss’, Mary
Immaculate College, Limerick, 20th February 2015.
2014: ‘Living Dolls: How Changes in Female Identity are Reflected in the Mirrors of Angela
Carter’s Fiction’, ‘Gender and Metamorphosis: The Sibéal Network Annual
Conference’, Trinity College Dublin, 21st-22nd November 2014.
2014: ‘Ladies in the Looking Glass: Exploring the Importance of Mirrors as a Female Space in
Angela Carter’s Construction of Identity’, ‘Locating the Gothic Festival and
Conference’, Limerick School of Art and Design and Mary Immaculate College,
Limerick, 22nd - 25th October 2014.
2014: ‘Damsels in Distress? The Importance of Illusion to the ‘Monstrous Feminine’ in Irish
Gothic Literature’, ‘3rd Annual Limerick Postgraduate Research Conference’, LIT PRS,
MIC SU, and UL PSU, Limerick Institute of Technology, 29th May 2014.
2014: “She was colder than I. She was better at all of it’: Investigating the Male Construction
of the Deadly Female through Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles’, ‘Gender and
Transgression in Twentieth Century Britain Conference’, Newcastle University, 7th
March 2014.
2013: ‘Constructions of the ‘Other’ Half in Irish Gothic Literature: Female Representation and
Sexuality in Woman’s Role as Wife and Lover’, ‘The Gender Question’: A Mary
Immaculate College and University of Limerick Sibéal Postgraduate Symposium’
Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, 15th May 2013.
2012: ‘Strained Sisterhoods: A Critique of Femininity and Female Sexuality in Gothic
Literature’, ‘Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) Conference’, University
of Liverpool, 18th June 2012.
2012: ‘Damsels, Doppelgangers and the Death of the Natural Mother: How Fairy Tale Ideology
Inspired the Gothic Literary Tradition’, ‘Folklore and Fantasy Conference’, Sussex
Centre for Folklore, University of Chichester, 13th – 15th April 2012.
2012: ‘From Dolls to Demons: Constructions of Femininity in the Gothic Female’s Evolution’,
‘Queer Sisterhood in Contemporary Women’s Writing: A Postgraduate Symposium’,
Postgraduate Contemporary Women’s Writing Network, Queens University Belfast,
29th February 2012.
2011: “Do you want me to be a doll forever?’: The Gothic Female’s Resistance to Patriarchy’,
‘Department of English Language & Literature Postgraduate / Postdoctoral
Conference’, Department of English Language & Literature, Mary Immaculate College,
Limerick, 6th December 2011.
4 of 6
Donna Mitchell
BOOK REVIEWS:
2016: Review of Gothic Tourism by Emma McEvoy for the University of Stirling’s ‘The
Gothic Imagination’ website, February 2016, (1200 words).
2016: Review of Charlotte Brontë: Writers and their Work by Patsy Stoneman in The
European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), January 2016, (1000 words).
2015: Review of Review of Women and Domestic Space in Contemporary Gothic Narratives:
The House as Subject by Andrew Hock Soon Ng for the University of Stirling’s ‘The
Gothic Imagination’ website, November 2015, (1200 words).
2015: Review of The Twilight of the Gothic? Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal
Romance by Joseph Crawford for the University of Stirling’s ‘The Gothic Imagination’
website, September 2015, (1200 words).
2015: Review of Decadent Daughters and Monstrous Mothers: Angela Carter and European
Gothic by Rebecca Munford for the University of Stirling’s ‘The Gothic Imagination’
website, July 2015, (1000 words).
2015: Review of The Gothic Child by Margarita Georgieva for the University of Stirling’s ‘The
Gothic Imagination’ website, March 2015, (1000 words).
2014: Review of The Gothic Fairy Tale in Young Adult Literature: Essays on Stories from
Grimm to Gaiman edited by Joseph Abbruscato and Tanya Jones for the University of
Stirling’s ‘The Gothic Imagination’ website, November 2014, (1000 words).
MEMBERSHIP OF ACADEMIC ORGANISATIONS:
Member of ESSE (The European Society for Studies in English)
Member of NEAS (The Irish Association for the Study of English)
Member and Treasurer of the Sibéal Feminist and Gender Studies Network
CONFERENCES:
2015: Coordinator for the ‘Revolutionary Genders’ Conference in NUI Galway, 18th – 19th
November 2016.
2015: Assistant coordinator for ‘The Literature of Loss’ Conference in Mary Immaculate
College, University of Limerick, 20th February 2015.
2014: Administrative assistant for ‘Locating the Gothic’ Conference and Festival in Mary
Immaculate College & the Limerick School of Art and Design, 22nd – 25th October
2014.
5 of 6