Tutorial Fellow, Christ Church

Lecturer in Italian, St John’s College and Worcester College

Academic background

Charlotte Ross has a BA (Honours) in Italian and English from Newnham College, Cambridge, an MSt. in Italian Studies from Balliol College, Oxford, and a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Warwick. Before joining the Faculty of Modern Languages at Oxford, she was Reader in Sexuality, Gender and Cultural Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Palermo (2015) and the University of Toronto (Goggio Visiting Professor, 2023).

Research

Charlotte’s research analyses cultural discourses of gender, sexuality and embodiment; the ways in which our gendered, sexed and sexual selves are constructed, narrated, represented, and de/re-constructed through counter-hegemonic discourses and practices. She has focused on LGBTQ+ individuals, communities, cultures and practices, predominantly in Italian culture, from the 19^th century to the present day. Recently, she has begun to work more comparatively, tracing cross-cultural dialogues and resonances between Italian, French and British texts, for example. Her work is interdisciplinary, ranging across literary study, critical approaches to cultural discourses more broadly, including film and media, and ethnographic analysis of lived experience. She is the author of two monographs, co-editor of several edited collections of essays and her articles have been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals, such as Italian Studies, Italian Culture, Modern Language Review, Modern Italy. Her work has been funded by grants from the British Academy, the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust. She is currently Senior Co-Editor of the journal Italian Studies

Teaching

Charlotte teaches on a range of topics across 19^th, 20^th and 21^st century Italian literature and culture. She is interested in hearing from graduate students who would like to work on questions of gender and sexuality in these periods, including those whose proposed projects are interdisciplinary in nature.

Selected Publications

Monographs

• Ross, C. (2015), Eccentricity and Sameness: Discourses on Lesbianism and Desire between Women in Italy, 1860s-1930s. Bern, Oxford and New York: Peter Lang.
• Ross, C. (2011), Primo Levi's Narratives of Embodiment: Containing the Human. New York: Routledge.

Edited Books and Journal Special Issues

• Heim, J., C. Ross and Smythe, SA, eds (2019), special issue of gender/sexuality/Italy: Italian Queer Cultures (6). 
• Ross, C. and S. Scarparo, eds (2010), special issue of Italian Studies: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Italian Culture: Representations and Critical Debates. 65 (2).
• Albertazzi, D., C. Brook, C. Ross and N. Rothenberg, eds (2009) Resisting the Tide. Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001-06). New York: Continuum.
• Polezzi, L. and C. Ross, eds (2007), In corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy. Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
• Ross, C. and R. Sibley, eds (2004), Illuminating Eco. On the Boundaries of Interpretation. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Articles in Journals

• Ross, C. (2023) ‘Locked in or locked out, or “la vita della cose”. Gender, agency and (dis)embodiment in Primo Levi and Nicoletta Vallorani’s Speculative Fiction’. Enthymema XXXIII: 91-105.
• Antosa, S., & Ross, C. (2022), ‘Backward Modernism and Queerly Desiring Women in Early 20th- Century British and French Fiction: Rosamond Lehmann and Jeanne Galzy’. Ticontre. Teoria Testo Traduzione, (17). 
• Ross C. (2020), ‘Surviving Melancholy and Mourning: a Queer Politics of Damage in Italian Literary Representations of Same-sex Parenting’. Phenomenology of Mind, 19: 54-70.
• Heim J., C. Ross and Smythe, SA (2019), ‘Queer Italian Studies: Critical Reflections from the Field’. Italian Studies, 74 (4): 397-412.
• Ross, C. (2016), ‘“La carezza incompiuta”. Queer Aesthetics, Desire and Censorship in Ticchioni’s Il suicidio di un esteta’, MLR, 111 (2): 390-412.
• Ross, C. (2016), ‘“Donne nate male, amicizie colpevoli e quelle profonde come una parentela”. Marise Ferro’s queerly desiring women’. Italian Culture, 34 (2): 63-80.
• Ross, C. (2012) ‘Imagined Communities: Issues around LGBTQ Ageing in Italy’. Modern Italy, 17 (4): 449-464.
• Ross, C. (2012), ‘Goliarda Sapienza’s Eccentric Interruptions: Multiple selves, gender ambiguities and disrupted desires’. altrelettere. 
• Ross, C. (2010), ‘Critical Approaches to Gender and Sexuality in Italian Culture and Society’. Italian Studies, 65 (2): 164–77.
• Ross, C., (2006), ‘Incarnando la sessualità: performatività, parodia, piacere’. Omosapiens. Studi e ricerche sull'orientamento sessuale. Rizzo, D. (ed.). Rome: Carocci Editore, 1: 123-36.
• Ross, C. (2005), ‘Creating the Ideal Posthuman Body? Cyborg Sex and Gender in the Work of Buzzati, Vacca and Ammaniti’. Italica. 82 (2): 222-247.
• Ross, C. (2004), ‘Parallel Productions: Rita and Paola Levi Montalcini’. Italian Studies. 59: 132-151.
• Ross, C. (2004), ‘Queering the Habitus: Lesbian Identity in Stancanelli’s Benzina’. Romance Studies. 22 (3): 237-250.

Chapters in Books

• Ross, C. (2020a), ‘“Exemplary” Lesbians: the struggle for adequate representation’. In Bazzoni, A. and Bardazzi, A. (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.105-28. 
• Ross, C. (2017), ‘Dalla patologizzazione all’amore per gli ‘anormali’: La rappresentazione del desiderio dissidente tra donne in testi (pseudo)scientifici del tardo Ottocento e del primo Novecento’. In Grassi, U., Lagioia, V. and Romagnani, G-P. (eds.), Tribadi, sodomiti, invertite e invertiti, pederasti, femminelle, ermafroditi...: Per una storia dell'omosessualità, della bisessualità e delle trasgressioni di genere in Italia. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, pp. 155-171.
• Ross, C. (2017), ‘Amalia Guglielminetti. The Queer, Solitary Seductress’. In Storchi, S., Spunta, M. and Morelli, M. (eds), Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy. Essays for Sharon Wood. Leicester: Troubador, pp.15-26.
• Ross, C. (2015), ‘Goliarda Sapienza’s French Connections’. In Bazzoni, A., Bond, E. and Wehling-Giorgi, Goliarda Sapienza in context: intertextual relationships with Italian and European culture. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 87-100.
• Ross, C. (2015), ‘Italian Medical and Literary Discourses around Female Same-Sex Desire, 1877-1906’. In Babini, V., Beccalossi, C. and Riall, L. (eds.), Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789- 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 228-48.
• Ross, C. (2013), ‘Queer Spaces in Turin’. In Storchi, S. (ed.), Beyond the Piazza. Public and Private Spaces in Modern Italian Culture. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, pp.129-47.
• Ross, C. (2012), ‘Queer Embodiments: Fluidity, materiality, stickiness’. In Antosa, S. (ed.), Queer Crossings. Milan-Udine: Mimesis, pp.19-35.
• Ross, C. (2012), ‘Identità di genere e sessualità nelle opere di Goliarda Sapienza: finzioni necessariamente queer’. In Providenti, G. (ed.), “Quel sogno d’essere” nell’opera di Goliarda Sapienza. Percorsi critici nel caleidoscopio artistico di una delle maggiori autrici del Novecento italiano. Rome: Aracne, pp.223-42.
• Ross, C. (2007), ‘“Porno-girl da fumetto”: Bodies and Sexuality in the Work of Isabella Santacroce’. In In corpore: bodies in post-unification Italy. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, pp.242-59
• Ross, C. (2007), ‘Primo Levi’s Science Fiction’. In Gordon, R. S. C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi. Cambridge University Press, pp. 105-18.
• Ross, C. & Duncan, D. (2007), ‘Reading Allowed: Contemporary Lesbian and Gay Fiction in Italy’. In Ania, G. and Hallamore Caesar, A. (eds.), Trends in Contemporary Italian Narrative, 1980-2007. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 90-113.
• Ross, C. (2007), ‘Rita Levi Montalcini: engagement with the life of science and the science of life’. In Barwig, A. and Stauder, T. (eds.), Intellettuali italiani del secondo Novecento. p. 503-21.
• Ross, C. (2007), ‘Who are you Calling Robot? Cyberfeminisms and Fictions’. In Ronchetti, A. & Sapegno, M. S. (eds.), Dentro/fuori sopra/sotto. Critica femminista e canone letterario negli studi di italianistica. Ravenna: Longo editore, pp.161-70.
• Ross, C. (2004), ‘The Serendipities of Semiotics, or Knowledge as a 'Theory of Next Thursday', in Illuminating Eco: On the Boundaries of Interpretation. Ross, C. & Sibley, R. (eds.). Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 105-120.