Personal statement
I was educated at comprehensive schools in the East Midlands, and worked in Italy during a gap year before studying for a BA (Hons) in Italian with French Literatures and Languages at the University of Leeds. I then taught English in Finland, followed by several years in Arts Administration working for major opera companies in London, Sydney, and Melbourne while studying for an MA by Research in nineteenth-century Italian opera and gender at Leeds. I was awarded my PhD in nineteenth-century Italian women writers from the University of Warwick, and before joining Strathclyde I was a Junior Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
I am a feminist media, literary and cultural studies scholar with a specialism in Italian middle-class women's everyday lives from the 1870s to the 1920s. I carry out research on women performers, writers, readers, spectators and journalists, drawing on studies in celebrity culture, theatre, opera, silent film, print culture and life writings, and see the connection between my active research and teaching as vital for my students. My first book, Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870-1910 (University of Toronto Press, 2014), adopted a new historicist approach to look at the domestic fiction and journalism of three of the most significant women writers of the period (La Marchesa Colombi; Neera; Matilde Serao). I showed how, in spite of their anti-feminist public declarations, their work offered an implicit feminist intervention and a legitimate means of approaching and engaging with the burning social and political issues of the day regarding the "woman question". It won a Finalist place in the Edinburgh Gadda Prize 2019 (Vittorio Group). My second monograph, Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond (Routledge), will be published in November 2021. It examines middle-class Italian women as protagonists and consumers of literature, theatre, opera, and film. Using personal writing, journalism, and canonical texts, it analyses female performance and women’s responses. Its interdisciplinary analysis of female relationships involving admiration illuminates a vibrant Italian female culture industry during early feminism.
I am Director of Internationalisation for the School of Humanities, a member of the University's Feminist Network, and regularly discuss gender equality issues on BBC Radio Scotland. I was a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College from 2012-20, and recently I was elected to the Society for Italian Studies Executive Committee. I also currently sit on the University Senate and Court committees, and coordinate the University's Society & Policy research theme sub-theme Communication, Language and Translation.
In 2018, I was the PI leading a Royal Society of Edinburgh funded collaborative project with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on Scottish and European inter-cultural and transnational exchanges in the long nineteenth century, and in 2020 published a thematic Research Framework as the director of the Scottish Network for Nineteenth-Century European Cultures under the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework.
In 2021, I was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
I welcome prospective MRes and PhD students in any aspect of modern Italian/European history and/or literature, particularly in relation to women and gender.
Teaching
I teach undergraduate and postgraduate classes on gender, celebrity culture, theatre, opera and film spectatorships, as well as translation.
Research interests
My interdisciplinary research on Italian middle-class women as protagonists, performers and spectators (of "women's opera, theatre and silent film" in the context of melodrama), draws on gender studies, women's studies, literary studies, opera studies, theatre studies, media studies, feminist film studies and cultural studies in late C19th and early C20th Italy and beyond (France, Britain and North America).
I am the author of Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteeth Century Italy and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2021 forthcoming) and Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870-1910 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). I am also co-editor of Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception, and Networks (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021 forthcoming), Women and Gender in Post-Unification Italy (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), and co-guest editor of special issues of the journal Italian Studies on The Diva in Modern Italian Culture (2015) and The Italianist (Rethinking Neera, 2010).
In 2018, I was Principal Investigator on the RSE-funded project 'Establishing SNNEC: Scotland and Europe Then (1789-1914) and Now', which hosted a series of academic and public workshops and events and established the Scottish Network for Nineteenth-Century European Cultures. In 2019, together with Prof. Gabriella Romani, Dr Morena Corradi (Queen's, CUNY) and Dr Silvia Valisa (Florida State University), I founded the Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies.
I have held four prestigious Visiting Fellowships, including at the University of Oxford (2019 - at St. Catherine's College, Hilary Term, and at Harris Manchester College, Trinity Term), Seton Hall University, New Jersey (2014), and the University of Bologna (2014).
Professional activities
- Modern Italy : Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 7/2021
- Covid Conversations: Imagining New Futures in Scotland
- Chair
- 19/5/2021
- American Association for Italian Studies
- Speaker
- 5/2021
- INNCIS (Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies): Ottocentismi (External organisation)
- Chair
- 1/10/2020
- Society for Italian Studies Annual Conference (Themed)
- Speaker
- 9/2020
- Italian Studies (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 9/2020
More professional activities
Projects
- RSE-funded Workshop Grant 2018 - £8,000
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- A collaboration between university-based scholars working in fields related to nineteenth-century European cultures and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, during 2018 I led a series of free academic workshops and one major public event that examined the inter-connections and exchanges between Scotland and Europe’s literary, performance, and scientific cultures in the past to ask how our understanding of these can better prepare the people of Scotland for a post-Brexit world.
- 29-Jan-2018 - 15-Jan-2018
- Establishing SNNEC: Scottish and European Exchanges Then (1780-1914), and Now
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- 29-Jan-2018 - 28-Jan-2019
- Scotland and Europe: Politics, Culture and National Borders - A Public Event at the National Museum of Scotland
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- Together with the Director of the Society for Antiquaries of Scotland, I hosted an afternoon of talks and discussion on Scotland's relationships with Europe past and present. Distinguished guests included Professor Sir Tom Devine OBE FRSE HonMRIA FBA FSA Scot., who presented a lecture titled:
'How Highlandism Conquered Europe: From Sir Walter Scott to Brexit'. There followed a Roundtable with speakers including Anthony Salamone, Research Fellow and Strategic Advisor of the Scottish Centre on European Relations think tank, as well as representatives of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at Durham University, the Society of Dix-Neuviemistes and the RSE-funded project Establishing SNNEC. Some 70 members of the public were in attendance.
- 29-Jan-2018 - 12-Jan-2019
- Women at the Theatre: Writers as Spectators in Post-Unification Italy (1861-1914)
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2014 - 31-Jan-2014
- ‘Italian Divas at the fin de siècle: Roles, Receptions and Transnational Legacies’
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- The student will undertake a doctoral thesis on 'Italian Divas at the fin de siècle: Roles, Receptions and Transnational Legacies', in partnership with Scottish Opera. Focussing on the highly-acclaimed soprano singer Adelina Patti (1843-1919), who was renowned for her performances of Verdi's heroines, the student will work in conjunction with the Director of Outreach & Education at Scottish Opera during Verdi's bicentenary year (2013) and beyond, to commission performances of Patti's and other nineteenth-century Italian divas' most famous roles, which will be performed by young Scots singers enrolled on Scottish Opera's Emerging Artists Programme
Amount applied for: £53,594 - 31-Jan-2013 - 31-Jan-2016
- Women at the Theatre: Writers as Spectators in Early Post-Unification Italy, 1861-1914
- Mitchell, Katharine (Principal Investigator)
- 21-Jan-2013 - 31-Jan-2013
More projects
Address
Italian
Lord Hope Building
Lord Hope Building
Location Map
View University of Strathclyde in a larger map