Stefania ARCARA
I have been working in the fields of feminist literary criticism, women’s studies and gender studies since 1991, when I graduated from the University of Catania with a thesis on Virginia Woolf.
My areas of research include: literary translation; women’s writing in 17th-century England; travel literature; Victorian poetry and Pre-Raphaelite art; late-Victorian Hellenism and discourses on sexuality in the Victorian era; documents of the British suffrage movement and of British and American feminism of the 1970s.
After over ten years of study both in Italy (La Sapienza, Rome) and abroad (Master’s and PhD, Warwick University, UK; Graduate Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), I returned to the University of Catania, where I have been teaching English Literature since 1999.
In 2014 I was one of the founders of the GENUS Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, within the Department of Humanities, of which I am Chair.
From 2013 to 2016, I was Coordinator of the interdepartmental project ‘GenderLab – workshops and other educational activities on gender studies’.
I am a member of the Ph.D. Board in Interpretation Sciences (DISUM).
I currently teach Gender Studies, Comparative English Literatures and Cultures in postgraduate courses, and English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration for undergraduate courses. I taught for over ten years at the Ragusa campus, where I recently (2021–24) returned to teach English Literature to postgraduates. In the past, I tought the following courses: Cultural Studies, English Literature from the 19th Century to the Contemporary Era, Comparative English Literature and Postmodern Rewritings in English Literature.
I am a member of the International Scientific Committee of the journal Nouvelles Questions Féministes, founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Christine Delphy.
I am co-editor of the materialist feminist blog Manastabal.
2025 - National scientific qualification for Full Professor
2020 - Associate Professor
2014 - present: President of GENUS, Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Centre, Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Unict
2001 University of Catania (IT), Senior Lecturer in English Literature (Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche)
1999-2001 University of Catania, Lecturer
1993-1998 University of Warwick (UK) - Phd in British and Comparative Cultural Studies
1994-95 University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) - Graduate Fellowship - Department of Comparative Literature
1992-93 Università di Roma La Sapienza - Postgraduate course in Literary Translation "Teoria e prassi della traduzione letteraria"
1991-92 University of Warwick (UK) - Master of Arts with distinction in Translation Studies - Graduate School of Comparative Literary Theory and Translation Studies
1991 University of Catania (IT) - Degree cum laude in Foreign Languages and Literature - Facoltà di Lettere, Università di Catania
1990-91 Belfast (Northern Ireland) - Italian Language Assistant at Belfast Secondary Schools
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Memberships:
International Virginia Woolf Society (IVWS)
The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain (VWSGB)
AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica)
ANDA (Associazione Nazionale Docenti di Aglistica)
ESSE (The European Society for the Study of English)
The Gender Studies Network (ESSE)
SIL (Società Italiana delle Letterate)
Member of the Comité international of Nouvelles Questions Féministes, founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Christine Delphy
International Advisory Board, INTRALINEA, online translation journal (www.intralinea.org)
History and Translation Network (https://historyandtranslation.net/)
Scientific Committee of the book series lumen, Edizioni duetredue.
Head of the Research Unit at the University of Catania for the 2022 PRIN Project ‘Between Text and Performance: Race and Gender in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (1970s–present)’, in collaboration with Roma Tre University (2023–2026).
Principal Investigator of the research project "DIRIS -Disobedient, rebellious, subversive figures in literature between East and West from the late nineteenth century to the present", as part of PIA.CE.RI (University Research Incentive Plan 2024–2026) at the University of Catania (2024–2026).
Member of the University of Catania research unit for the PRIN 2020 project ‘Phototexts: rhetoric, poetics and cognition’, coordinated by Principal Investigator Michele Cometa, in collaboration with the University of Palermo, the University of Genoa and the University of Parma (2022–2025).
Member of the project “Medieval Romance and Oriental Literature. Manifestations, Forms and Lexicon of Eros from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era – EROS2020” within the framework of PIA.CE.RI (University Research Incentive Plan 2020–2022) at the University of Catania (2020–2023).
Member of the “PERSEI” Research Project – “Performing/Transforming: cross-border movements and hybridisations of genres, codes and functions between the analogue universe and the digital multiverse”, funded by the University of Catania (2019–2021).
Member of the FIR interdisciplinary project entitled “Plural Bodies, Gender Issues / Corpi plurali, questioni di genere”, funded by the University of Catania, with external peer review (2014–2017).