Dr Charlotte Ross PhD

I teach modules on literature, society, identity and translation for Italian Studies. I teach seminars on gender, sexuality and feminism for the MRes in Sexuality and Gender Studies, as well as supervising PhD students.

I would be happy to hear from prospective doctoral candidates wishing to pursue research on gender and sexuality in Italian culture or other aspects of twentieth-century and contemporary Italian culture and society.

My research focuses on how bodies, gender and sexuality are understood, constructed and represented in socio-cultural contexts. I am particularly interested in elaborations of sexuality and identity, in cultural texts as well as in practices of social engagement and activism. Recently, I have been involved in several collaborative projects. With Silvia Antosa (Enna 'Korè'), I am currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project entitled 'Cultural Discourses on Desire between Women. A Queer Comparative Analysis’, which explores transversal relationships between discourses on female sexuality in Italy, France and the UK between the 1870s and the 1930s. Together with Julia Heim (Baruch College, CUNY) and SA Smythe (UC Irvine), I recently led an AHRC Research Network Project, called the 'Queer Italia Network (QuIR). See our website for details of the workshops and events we organised: www.queeritalia.com. 

Previously, I completed an AHRC-funded project called Eccentricity and Sameness: Lesbian Cultural Identity in Italy, which explores the discursive construction and representation of lesbian identities and desire in literary and cultural texts. This has led to the publication of a monograph,  Eccentricity and Sameness. Discourses on Lesbianism and Desire between Women in Italy, 1860s-1930s. For more information about this project, see my blog: http://charlotterossresearch.wordpress.com/

I studied Combined Honours English and Modern Languages at Newnham College, Cambridge and for a Master of Studies in Modern Languages at Balliol College, Oxford before completing a PhD at the University of Warwick, under the supervision of Professor Ann Hallamore Caesar and Dr Jenny Burns.

• Visiting Professor at the University of Palermo, Spring 2015
• '"Cunnilingui" and "l'amore lesbiano" in late 19 and early 20th century Italy' at the American Association of Italian Studies conference, Zurich, May 2014
• Keynote presentation: 'Goliarda Sapienza's French Connections' at the conference 'Goliarda Sapienza in Context', IGRS, University of London, May 2013
• Presentation of the film The Hunger at 'Shout', Birmingham's festival of queer culture, 15 November 2012
• 'Matrimoni Bostoniani', at 'Immaginaria' film festival, Milan, 5 October 2012
• 'Self-same tongues of condemnation or approof:discourses around lesbian and female same-sex desire, 1870-1914' at the workshop 'Italian Sexualities Uncovered: The Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914)', Bologna, 20-22 September 2012
• '‘Goliarda Sapienza: an eccentric revolutionary’, at the 18th Lesbian Lives conference, ‘Revolting, bodies, politics and genders’, University of Brighton, February 2011
• ‘Goliarda Sapienza e l’arte della fluidità sessuale’, presented at the conference ‘ “On ne naît pas, on le deviant”. Les Gender Studies et le cas italien, des années 70 a aujourd’hui. Entre libération sexuelle et nouveaux tabous’, University of Grenoble, November 2010
• Invited keynote presentation, 'Queer bodies: fluidity, materiality and stickiness' at the interdisciplinary conference 'Queer Crossings', University of Palermo, June 2010