Frances Clemente

Dr Frances Clemente is an Honorary Faculty Research Fellow at the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) and Lecturer in Italian at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. She holds a doctorate in Modern Languages (Italian) from Oxford, alongside degrees from the University of Pisa and MSt from Oxford. Her research explores 19th- and 20th-century Italian cultural and literary production, focusing on alterity, otherness, and interdisciplinary methodologies like psychoanalysis, feminist, ecofeminist, and queer criticism. She has conducted postdoctoral visits at Sorbonne University, Warwick University, and Columbia University.

Her current projects include The Ecstatic Dis-Order, analyzing ecstasy’s role in post-unification Italy (1861–1915), and The Woman Is a Beast, tracing animalization of women in Italian literature from unification to fascism. She teaches courses on modern Italian literature, narrative, poetry, and women writers, emphasizing Southern Italian and Neapolitan cultural history.

Publications include monographs and essays in Italian Studies, Mimesis Journal, and Whatever: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Queer Theories and Studies. Her work bridges literary analysis with contemporary debates on gender, race, and ecology, offering innovative frameworks for understanding Italian cultural history.