Dr Katharine Mitchell
Senior Lecturer
Italian
Area of Expertise
Spectatorship;
Gender and modern celebrity culture;
Feminism and/or postfeminism;
Women screenwriters and the ‘female gaze’.
Prize And Awards
- Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- Recipient
- 7/2021
- Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
- Recipient
- 21/1/2021
- Election to the Society for Italian Studies Executive Committee
- Recipient
- 3/4/2020
- Society of Italian Studies Executive Committee
- Recipient
- 4/2020
- Finalist place awarded in the Edinburgh Gadda Prize 2019 (Vittoria Group) for my monograph, 'Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014)
- Recipient
- 26/6/2019
- Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford
- Recipient
- 8/3/2019
Publications
- Francesca Bertini : silent diva, spectator & her female spectators
- Mitchell Katharine, Misiak Anna, Backman Rogers Anna, Sadri Houman
- 11 (2023)
- La Duse, Aleramo et Serao spectatrices de la scène et du cinéma italiens au tournant du XXe siècle : rencontres parisiennes
- Mitchell Katharine
- Spectatrices! De l’Antiquité à nos jours (2022) (2022)
- Matilde Serao : International Profile, Reception, and Networks
- Romani Gabriella, Fanning Ursula, Mitchell Katharine
- (2022)
- https://doi.org/10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-12853-3
- 'Envoicing' women on page, stage, and screen in early post-unification Italy
- Mitchell Katharine
- Con altra voce echi, variazioni e dissonanze nell'espressione letteraria (2022) (2022)
- Gender, Writing, Spectatorships : Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth Century Italy and Beyond
- Mitchell Katharine
- Nineteenth Century Literature Series Nineteenth Century Literature Series (2021)
- https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429293511
- Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (Thematic) for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland : Scottish Network for Nineteenth Century European Cultures
- Partzsch Henriette, Mitchell Katharine, Rapport Michael
- (2020)
Teaching
I teach and supervise across undergraduate and postgraduate classes/projects in Journalism, Media and Communication and on an undergraduate elective and the CCEd in Italian.
I have over 23 years’ experience of teaching Italian literature, culture, and language in UK Universities (Leeds, 2000-01; Warwick, 2003-8; Manchester, 2008; Cambridge, 2008-10; Strathclyde, 2011-). In 2021, I was nominated by my students for my fourth Strathclyde Students’ Union Teaching Excellence Award (previous nominations were in 2012; 2013; 2017 & 2021) and for a HaSS Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in the category ‘Effective Sustained Contribution’.
I am External Examiner in Italian at Royal Holloway, University of London, and have externally examined MPhil theses at the University of Glasgow, (2019) the University of Birmingham (2022) and the University of Kent (2023).
I have supervised to completion an MRes on 'Denied and Disowned Motherhood in the Works of Annie Ernaux and Dacia Maraini' (2021) and I am currently supervising an MPhil on 'British Military Bands in Nineteenth-Century Scotland'.
I regularly supervise Masters dissertations for the MLitt in Media & Communications and the MSc in Applied Gender Studies.
I have guest-taught seminars and lectures nationally and internationally at California State University, Long Beach (2014), Seton Hall University, New Jersey (2014), Columbia University (2016), the University of Naples, "Federico II" (2021), and at the University of Oxford (2022).
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, cultural studies, women's studies, literary studies, opera studies, theatre studies, media studies and feminist film studies in late C19th and early C20th Italy and beyond (France, Britain and North America). I also have interests in contemporary celebrity culture and gender, as well as gender issues in the media.
I am currently working on the first cohort of female screenwriters in modern Italy, drawing on archival material evidence in film and women's journals, as well as accounts of stars and evidence in life writings (diaries, letters, biographies and autobiographies) from the 1910s to the 1920s.
My most recent book, Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2022) 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.
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).
Professional Activities
- Society for Italian Studies Interim Themed Conference
- Speaker
- 7/9/2023
- ‘In Search of Girl Methods in Liberal Italy’ and ‘Meanness & Other Affects in Italian Domestic Fiction’
- Invited speaker
- 20/6/2023
- 'The (Anti?) Feminism of Matilde Serao?', ‘1922-2022: Italy One Hundred Years Later. Femminismi di destra’, Inaugural 'Giornata di studio' of the American Association for Italian Studies
- Invited speaker
- 1/2023
- ‘Matilde Serao, Screenwriter?’ Student-led one-day event to discuss work in progress at Harris Manchester College, Oxford
- Speaker
- 11/2022
- Modern Language Association International Symposium
- Speaker
- 2/6/2022
- Modern Language Association International Symposium
- Organiser
- 2/6/2022
Projects
- Scotland and Europe: Politics, Culture and National Borders - A Public Event at the National Museum of Scotland
- Mitchell, Kate (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
- Establishing SNNEC: Scottish and European Exchanges Then (1780-1914), and Now
- Mitchell, Kate (Principal Investigator)
- 29-Jan-2018 - 28-Jan-2019
- RSE-funded Workshop Grant 2018 - £8,000
- Mitchell, Kate (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
- Women at the Theatre: Writers as Spectators in Post-Unification Italy (1861-1914)
- Mitchell, Kate (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2014 - 31-Jan-2014
- ‘Italian Divas at the fin de siècle: Roles, Receptions and Transnational Legacies’
- Mitchell, Kate (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, Kate (Principal Investigator)
- 21-Jan-2013 - 31-Jan-2013
Contact
Dr
Katharine
Mitchell
Senior Lecturer
Italian
Email: katharine.mitchell@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 444 8202