Faculty

Biography

Rachel O’Donnell is Associate Professor and joined the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program in 2017. With a background in Political Science, International Development, and Latin American Studies, Rachel’s writing and teaching are interdisciplinary and have been focused on global feminist politics and Central America. Her research has explored social movements and political violence in Guatemala during the period of regional democratic and neoliberal reform, and her work has been published in the Women and Social Movements International database with Alexander Street Press. Her more recent work on the history and political economy of bioprospecting in the region is part of an international project on abortifacients and plant-based contraceptives.

Rachel teaches courses in the Writing, Speaking, and Argument and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies programs. Her research in writing studies has been about academic labor, social reproduction theory, and political consciousness. She also supervises honors theses and independent study projects on a range of topics, including international development and transnational feminism.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• LTST 200:  Studies in Translation
• WRTG 105:  Contemporary Social Movements: Exploring Social and Political Change
• WRTG 105:  Transnational Feminism: Global Perspectives on Power and Equality
• WRTG 263:  Translation: Interpreting and Adapting
• WRTG 266:  Words Have Power: Writing for Social Change
• GSWS 206:  Global Politics of Gender and Health
• GSWS 293:  Gender, War, and Militarism
• GSWS 200:  History of Feminism

Selected Publications

• How Apacín became Petiveria: The Discovery and Disappearance of a Well-Known Abortifacient Plant. Reproducing the Eighteenth Century: Genealogies of Abortion and Bodily Autonomy, eds. Fiona Brideoake, Ula Lukszo Klein, and Nicole Garret. University of Virginia Press. Forthcoming.
• The Poisoning of Hector Cañas Pershing by Aura Estrada. Translation from Spanish. Volume 59 Issue 1. Denver Quarterly. 2025.
• Maya Q'eqchi' Women of Sepur Zarco: The Demand for Justice and Reparations after the Guatemalan Civil War. Women and Social Movements. Special Issue and Roundtable on Indigenous Women’s and Gender History. 29:1. June 2025.
• Caribbean Healers in the Botanical Archives. Peitho, Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. Special Issue (Re)Writing our Histories, (Re)Building Feminist Worlds: Working Toward Hope in the Archives. 2025.
• Maya Women Speak about Warfare and Community in Guatemala in the 1980s. Voices of Indigenous Women in American Empire: North America and the Global South, 1830-2020. Women and Social Movements International, Fall 2024, Vol. 27, no. 2, ed. Kathryn Kish Sklar. Alexander Street Press. 2024.
• Apacina, A Contemporary Herbal and Ambiguous Tale. K. Verlag, Berlin. Vol. 2 Field guides for a Preternaturalist, single-author chapbook, funded by LUCA-arts, Brussels. 2022.
• Biotechnology and Biopiracy: Plant-based Contraceptives in the Americas and the (Mis)management of Nature. Reprint. Climate Chaos: Ecofeminisms and the Land Question, ed. Anna Isla. Inanna Publications. 2019.
• New Forms of Resistance in the Highlands: Reproductive Control, Biopiracy, and Local Knowledge in Guatemala. Brújula: revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoamericanos. Special Issue on Environmental Justice, Political Resistance, and Social Movements: Defying Ecological Degradation in Latin America. 2017.
• The Politics of Natural Knowing: Contraceptive Plant Properties in the Caribbean. Journal of International Women's  Studies. Special Issue Women and Gender: Looking Toward ‘Caribbeanness.’ 17:3, 59-79. 2016.
• ‘This is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child’: The Maternal Voice in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ and the Politics of Nature and Knowing in the Caribbean. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative. 7:1, 100-110. 2016.
• Gender, Culture, and Knowledge in New Spain: Sor Juana’s ‘To the Gentleman in Peru.’ Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 44:8, 1114-1129. 2015.