Thomas McDonald

Thomas McDonald is a lecturer in East Asian languages, literatures, and cultures. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, where his doctoral dissertation examined how Japanese-Korean writer Lee Yangji and Austrian-Slovene writer Peter Handke explored their minority heritage languages and cultures amid political and economic precarity in South Korea and the former Yugoslavia during the 1980s. At KU since 2023, Thomas teaches courses on Japan (Japan’s Minorities, Introduction to Contemporary Japan through Media, Business Japanese) and on East Asia more broadly (Eastern Civilizations, Translating East Asian Languages: Theory and Practicum). His current research centers on concepts of repetition and identity in contemporary literature from East Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Latin America. Thomas also teaches the Slovene language through the San Francisco Bay Area’s Club Slovenia.