Silvia Ross is Professor in Italian. Her primary areas of research include the modern and contemporary Italian novel, textual representations of space and place, Tuscan writers, Italian women prose writers, travel writing, eco-criticism, literature and the Holocaust, questions of conflict, identity and alterity and the text, food studies, among others. Her publications include edited collections of essays, as well as scholarly articles, book chapters, and monographs. She is interested in supervising PhD students and mentoring Post-Doctoral researchers in these and other, related fields.

Silvia was educated in Canada, Italy and the United States. She earned her BA in Italian and French from the University of Toronto in 1989 and spent her third year at the Università degli Studi di Firenze. She did her graduate work in Italian literature at the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), where she obtained an MA in 1992 and a PhD in 1996, and spent three semesters at the Charles S. Singleton Centre, Villa Spelman, Florence. While completing her thesis, she taught Italian language at Duke University in Durham, NC for two years. She took up a lectureship in the Department of Italian at UCC in 1996, became Senior Lecturer in 2008 and Professor in 2025. She was Associate Dean &Head of the Graduate School of CACSSS from 2011-2013.

• Modern & Contemporary Italian Literature
• Tuscan Writers
• Space and Literature
• Identity, Alterity & Conflict in the text
• Travel Writing
• 20th & 21st-Century Italian Women Writers
• Ecocriticism & Ecofeminism
• Food & Identity in Italian Culture
• Literature and the Holocaust

Silvia Ross's research centres on questions of space, place and identity in the text, in particular in twentieth-century works set in Tuscany. Her monograph, Tuscan Spaces: Literary Constructions of Place (University of Toronto Press, 2010) examines the role of spatial representation and questions of identity and alterity in a variety of authors, Italian and non-Italian, including Federigo Tozzi, Aldo Palazzeschi, Vasco Pratolini, E. M. Forster, Dario Argento, Frances Mayes, David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell, and Elena Gianini Belotti. Her second monograph, titled Subverted Sites: Textual Representations of Conflict in Tuscany, is forthcoming with University of Toronto Press in 2026. 

Teaching Areas: Italian literature and culture at a wide range of levels, from first-year undergraduates to taught postgraduate students. Areas include: modern and contemporary Italian prose (e.g. Italo Calvino); Italian Women Writers (Aleramo; Duranti; Gianini Belotti; Maraini); representations of Italy in Travel Writing in English (Mayes; Nabhan);  Literature of the Holocaust (Primo Levi; Lia Levi; Liana Millu); Cultural Capitals (a section on Florence); Italian Foodways and cultural practices in literature and film; the representation of mobility, migration and (urban) space. She also delivers postgraduate research training and has devised a bespoke career development module for doctoral students in the Humanities and Social Sciences (PG7002). She has organized PhD Master Classes on specific topics, e.g. 'Autobiography'; 'Space/Place/Text'; 'Travel, Migration and Alterity'. She contributes to the MA in Women's Studies, with lectures on 'Motherhood in Italian Literature'. She has supervised many Taught Master's students on topics in Italian Studies and Women's Studies.

Modules Taught:

IT1001 Made in Italy

IT1201 Post-Unification Italian Culture and Society

IT2105 Vivere l’Italia/Living in Italy

IT2304 Primo Levi and his Legacy in the Context of the Holocaust

IT2306 Italo Calvino and the Interpretation of Reality

IT2310 Issues in Contemporary Italian Society through Film and Documentary

IT3307 Italian Women Writers

IT3315 Italian Foodways: Culture and Identity

LL3002 Travel Writing

LL3102 European Cultural Identities 2: Cultural Capitals

LL7001 Presenting Theory and Methodology

WL4101 Language and Power