Laura Donaldson

Donaldson died on 18 October 2026 at home in Freeville after colorectal cancer and several weeks in hospital, with her husband at her side. She was 79. Cornell Chronicle published an in memoriam notice on 5 November 2026. A celebration of life was held on 31 October 2026 at the Steve Merwin Farm in Freeville, where some of her ashes were cast near the pasture where she kept her sheep.

Laura Elizabeth Donaldson was born on 5 September 1947 in Coronado, California, to James Donaldson and Margaret Mitchell Donaldson. She attended American University, transferred to Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and graduated with a B.A. in religion, women's studies and English, holding a Danforth Scholarship as an undergraduate. She pursued master's work at Vanderbilt University and completed a Ph.D. at Emory University in 1983.

After early short term academic posts, Donaldson joined the University of Iowa as an associate professor in women's studies, English and Native American studies. There she hosted a national NPR radio programme on Native American storytelling. In 2000 she moved to Cornell University as an associate professor of English.

Her scholarship focused on religion, Native American culture and gender. She wrote Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender, and Empire-Building and edited Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse and a special Semeia issue on postcolonialism and scriptural reading. At Cornell she taught the Bible as literature, legal writing for pre law students, and The Year of the Dog for pre veterinary students, co taught a graduate seminar on Native encounters with Laura Brown, held a 2004 Society for the Humanities fellowship, taught at Telluride House, and coordinated Mellon Mays from 2001 to 2004. She retired in 2014 as professor emerita.

She then built a second career as a dog behavior consultant (CDBC, KPA CTP, CCUI), founding Four Paws, Four Directions and the Slow Thinking is Lifesaving for Dogs programme, writing award winning articles, speaking internationally, and consulting on legal cases involving aggressive dogs.

Donaldson was married to Michael Hogue of Freeville, New York. She was survived by sisters Susan Orangek and Linda Thomas, by Linda's husband Bruce Thomas, and by three nephews and their families. She kept working Border Collies, household cats, an African grey parrot named Obi, and a small flock of Navajo Churro sheep, and took part in sheep herding and tracking in the Northeast.

Former students and Cornell colleagues remembered her as a rigorous, generous mentor in Native American and postcolonial literary studies. In the dog training world she was known for trauma informed approaches to aggression and for Slow Thinking is Lifesaving for Dogs. Her two careers linked scholarship on storytelling and care with hands on work for animals and their people.