Ilyana Karthas

Assistant Professor
B.A., Barnard College, Columbia University
M.A., Oxford University
Ph.D., Brown University
area: Modern European Intellectual & Cultural History/ Aesthetics/ Women’s & Gender History
office: 301 Read Hall
phone: 573-882-9462
email: karthasi@missouri.edu

Ilyana Karthas joins the history faculty after teaching at McGill University in both the History Department and Women’s Studies Program. She specializes in 19th and 20th century French cultural history. Her research interests focus on the development of national identity, ideologies of gender, and modern aesthetics.

She received her M.A. in Women’s Studies from Oxford University where she examined 19th-century English women art critics and analyzed “separate spheres” ideology in Victorian Britain. Both projects contextualized the visual arts within historical and cultural themes. Her M.A. thesis documented and analyzed the life and work of Merlyn Severn, a pioneer in early dance photography in the 1930s. In 2004, her article,“Merlyn Severn”, was published in Oxford University Press’ New Dictionary of National Biography.

Professor Karthas completed her Ph.D. under the supervision of Carolyn J. Dean at Brown University where her research fields included French Cultural History, Modern European Intellectual & Cultural History, Women’s & Gender History, and Modern European Art History. She has received a number of fellowships including a Mary L. S. Downes Dissertation Fellowship, a Joukowsky Fellowship, and a Council for European Studies Florence Gould Foundation Fellowship from Columbia University.

Currently, Professor Karthas is developing a book manuscript entitled, "Nation, Modernism, Gender and the Cultural Politics of Ballet in France, 1909-1938.” This project will be the first book-length study that traces the revival of ballet in France (via the Russian ballet) in the early 20th century. The work highlights some of the cultural factors that enabled ballet to regain its position as a “primary cultural institution” after a long period of decline. The book will offer a new approach to the cultural resurgence of ballet in relation to three key themes of early twentieth-century European history: the development of nationalism, modern aesthetics, and changing configurations of gender.

Professor Karthas’ research continues to explore the relationship between the interaction among public intellectuals, the theatre-going public, and contemporary attitudes concerning nation, politics, and art.

Professor Karthas teaches courses on Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History (HIST 4570/4580), Revolutionary France (HIST 4650), French Culture & Politics Through the Arts (HIST 4971).

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