Filomena MITRANO

I was educated at “Sapienza” University of Rome (BA in Modern Languages and Literatures) and Rutgers University (MA and PhD in English). When in Rome I studied with Alessandro Portelli and Carole Beebe Tarantelli; at Rutgers, I studied with leading modernist scholars like Marianne DeKoven and renowned feminist theorist Catharine R. Stimpson. My research interests are at the intersection of modernism and literary/critical theory and combine with an emphasis on great women writers and public intellectuals. These lines of research have yielded four books – Gertrude Stein: Woman Without Qualities (Ashgate 2005); In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism (Edinburgh University Press 2016); Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theory (Edinburgh University Press 2022); La critica sconfinata. Introduzione al pensiero di Susan Sontag (Quodlibet 2022)—and a co-edited a collection, The Hand of the Interpreter: Essays on Meaning after Theory (Peter Lang 2009). I have published articles on theory, psychoanalysis, the visual arts, American literature in international literary journals, including Women’s Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, Modernism/modernity, Review of International American Studies and in philosophical journals like Azimuth: Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age and, more recently, SHIFT: International Journal of Philosophical Studies.  I have also authored two books on language, Language and Public Culture (Edizioni Q 2008) and English for American Studies: The Delectable Speaker, especially designed for the language curriculum at Ca’ Foscari.

I arrived at Ca’ Foscari University Venice in 2019 I am Associate Professor of  “Lingue e Letterature Anglo-Americane” in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies. In November 2023 I was one of the winners of the Department’s research prize for my two 2022 monographs: Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theory (Edinburgh University Press) and La critica sconfinata. Introduzione al pensiero di Susan Sontag (Quodlibet). I also serve as the Erasmus + and Overseas Departmental coordinator.

 Before coming to Ca’ Foscari I  was contract professor of Critical Methodologies at “Sapienza” University of Rome and adjunct professor of Literature and Composition at Loyola University Chicago, the John Felice Rome Center.I am an alumna of the School of Criticism and Critical Theory, Cornell University, where I studied with Jacqueline Rose, and I held positions as Visiting Lecturer at The Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts, Mount Holyoke College,  and as Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, Mount Holyoke College.

My new book, Antigone e il legame di fratellanza,  forthcoming in January 2024 with Grenelle Edizioni, examines the conjunction of the figure of Antigone and the political, with the help of thinkers who are lesser known in the Anglophone world, like Angela Putino and Marίa Zambrano.

I welcome theses supervision at all levels.