Literary criticism

McDougall is the author of the first extensive study of contemporary Hawaiian literature, Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. Published in 2016, Finding Meaning analyses kaona, which are hidden meanings in Hawaiian poetry, and features selections of fiction, poetry, and drama by Hawaiian authors such as Haunani-Kay Trask, John Dominis Holt, and Imaikalani Kalahele. Finding Meaning won the Native American Literature Symposiumʻs Beatrice Medicine Award for Published Monograph in 2017.^[6]

She co-edited Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific with Georganne Nordstrom and Jeffrey Carroll. Published in 2014, Huihui was the first anthology to navigate the interconnections between the rhetorics and aesthetics of the Pacific. It consists of critical essays, poetry, short fiction, speeches, photography, and personal reflections that cover a number of topics to not only intersect indigenous intellectual, political, and cultural traditions and innovations of the Pacific, but also to decolonize Oceania.^[7]

McDougall is also a contributor to numerous publications including The Value of Hawaiʻi 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions (2014), and Kanaka ʻŌiwi Methodologies: Moʻolelo and Metaphor (2015).^[8][9]

Poetry

McDougall wrote The Salt-Wind / Ka Makani Paʻakai, a poetry collection published in 2008 that tells of her positionality as a Kanaka wahine, a Hawaiian woman, in a colonized nation through childhood stories, belonging, and connection.^[10] Her second collection of poetry, 'Āina Hanau: Birth Land was published in 2023.^[11]

She has contributed her poetry to a number of publications and productions including Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing (2009),^[12] a poetry album titled Undercurrent,^[13] and UPU a theatre production featuring poetry from Pacific authors that premiered at the Auckland Arts Festival in 2020.^[14]

Community service

McDougall once served as the project coordinator of events for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a non-profit organization based in the island of Oʻahu that works to improve the livelihoods of Kānaka Maoli.^[15][16] In 2011, McDougall co-founded the Ala Press, an independent publisher that displays the work of Indigenous Pacific Islanders, with Craig Santos Perez.^[2] She currently serves as one of the associate editors of American Quarterly, the official publication of the American Studies Association.^[17] She is also on the board of directors for The Pacific Writers’ Connection, a non-profit organization that features the works of Indigenous leaders in the Pacific in hopes of spreading awareness to the concerns of Indigenous Peoples for their land and wellbeing.^[18]