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Robert Edward Mitchell

Professor of English
English
90015, Durham, NC 27708
304F Allen, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


My research focuses on the long history of relationships among the sciences and the arts, with especial focus on the eighteenth century/Romantic era, and our present moment. I have published four single-author monographs: Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity (Routledge, 2007), Bioart and the Vitality of Media (U of Washington P, 2010), Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature (Johns Hopkins UP, 2013), and Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism andLiberalism (Fordham UP, 2021). I am also co-author (along with sociologist Catherine Waldby) of the monograph Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 2006), and co-author (along with media theorist Orit Halpern) of The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023). I am co-editor of several collections of essays, including Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003), Romanticism and Modernity (Routledge, 2011), and Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media (Stanford UP, 2011). I have published articles in humanities, social science, and natural science journals, including Science, The American Journal of Bioethics, Biosocieties, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, European Romantic Review, Grey Room, South Atlantic Quarterly, Studies in Romanticism, and PMLA. My current research concentrates on relationships among biopolitics, the logic of populations, and the arts, and also on critical histories of the sciences, especially those of Hannah Arendt and Roberto Esposito.

My research approach is especially suited to graduate students interested in approaching the Romantic era as an inflection point within longer histories, particularly (though not exclusively) those that help us to understand the relationships of literature, the arts, and the sciences.

Office Hours


Spring '25 Semester: 

 Tuesdays, 11:45 am – 1:15 pm

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Professor of English · 2013 - Present English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Affiliate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society · 2014 - Present Duke Science & Society, University Initiatives & Academic Support Units

In the News


Published February 24, 2023
Robert Mitchell on the Problem with Smartness
Published May 1, 2015
Duke Announces 2015 Distinguished Professors

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Recent Publications


The Smartness Mandate

Book · January 10, 2023 The smartness mandate constitutes a new form of planetary governance, and Halpern and Mitchell aim to map the logic of this seemingly inexorable and now naturalized demand to compute, to illuminate the genealogy of how we arrived here and ... ... Cite

Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics Between Romanticism and Liberalism

Book · April 6, 2021 Infectious Liberty is available from the publisher on an open-access basis. Infectious Liberty generatively reconceives Romantic literature as a set of counter-hegemonic techniques of biopolitical experimentation. ... Open Access Cite

Enlightenment biopolitics: Population and the growth of genius

Journal Article Eighteenth Century · December 1, 2018 Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature

Institutional SupportPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Humanities Center · 2012 - 2013

From Specimen to Biobank: Using an Organizational Perspective to Study ELSI Issue

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill · 2010 - 2012

Saywer Seminar - Phenomenology Between Mind and Media

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation · 2010 - 2012

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Education, Training & Certifications


University of Washington · 2001 Ph.D.
University of California, Irvine · 1995 M.A.
University of Washington · 1994 B.A.