Donna Potts

Biography

Donna L. Potts (PhD, University of Missouri) was a professor at Kansas State University (taught there for 22 years) before coming to Washington in 2013. She retired in 2025 and is now a professor at New York Institute of Technology. She was a Fulbright senior lecturer at the National University of Ireland in Galway from 1997 to 1998, and later returned there for fellowships in the Moore Centre and the Irish Studies Centre, where she did research on Irish Literature and Environmentalism.

Selected Publications

Her publications include Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism; Contemporary Irish Poetry and The Pastoral Tradition; Contemporary Irish Writing and Environmentalism; This Landscape’s Fierce Embrace: The Poetry of Francis Harvey (edited collection); Waking Dreams (poems); Regions, Nations, Frontiers (conference proceedings); Ireland, Irish America, and Work; and many articles in the areas of Irish Literature, Ecocriticism, and Women’s Studies. She co-authored the statement on sexual assault for the American Association of University Professors. Her forthcoming collections include Women of the Palouse and Postcolonial Ecocriticism.

Research Interests

Her research interests include Irish Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Global Literatures, Ecocriticism, Women’s Studies, and Trauma Theory. She is a member of an MLA executive committee, the American Conference for Irish Studies, the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, and the Region and Nation Literature Association.

Graduate Supervision Interests

She has served on graduate committees in Literature, Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and Creative Writing, for theses and dissertations on topics such as Old English, Creative Nonfiction, Nineteenth Century American literature, Victorian Literature, Contemporary Irish Poetry, Postcolonial Literature, and Film.