Robert Edward Mitchell | Scholars@Duke

Robert Edward Mitchell
Professor of English

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 and Liberalism (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.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2013
Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2011
Affiliate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke Science & Society, Initiatives 2014

Contact Information

302A Allen, Durham, NC 27708
90015, Durham, NC 27708
rmitch@duke.edu (919) 684-2741

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of Washington 2001
- M.A., University of California - Irvine 1995
- B.A., University of Washington 1994
Previous Appointments & Affiliations
- Chair of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2018 - 2022
- Marcello Lotti Professor, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2015 - 2020
- Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2014 - 2017
- Associate Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2008 - 2013
- Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2009 - 2010
- Assistant Professor of English, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2002 - 2008
- Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor, English, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2007 - 2008
Recognition
In the News
- FEB 24, 2023 Trinity College of Arts and Sciences
  
  Robert Mitchell on the Problem with Smartness
- MAY 1, 2015
  
  Duke Announces 2015 Distinguished Professors
Awards & Honors
Research
Selected Grants
- Experimental Life: Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature awarded by National Humanities Center 2012 - 2013
- From Specimen to Biobank: Using an Organizational Perspective to Study ELSI Issue awarded by University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill 2010 - 2012
- Saywer Seminar - Phenomenology Between Mind and Media awarded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 2010 - 2012
- Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation 2007
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Halpern, Orit, and Robert Mitchell. The Smartness Mandate (Accepted). MIT Press, 2023.
  - Mitchell, Robert. Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics Between Romanticism and Liberalism. Fordham University Press, 2021.
    Open Access Copy
  - Mitchell, R. Experimental life: Vitalism in Romantic science and literature. 2013, pp. 1–309.
  - Mitchell, R., and J. Khalip, editors. Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media. Stanford University Press, 2011.
  - Pfau, T., and R. Mitchell, editors. Romanticism and Modernity. Routledge, 2011.
  - Mitchell, R. Bioart and the Vitality of Media. University of Washington Press, 2010.
  - Mitchell, R. E. Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity. Routledge, 2007.
  - Waldby, C., and R. Mitchell. Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. Duke University Press, 2006.
  - Mitchell, R., editor. Hygëia, or, Essays moral and medical: on the causes affecting the personal state of our middling and affluent classes. Thoemmes Continuum, 2004.
  - Mitchell, R., and P. Thurtle, editors. Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body. University of Washington Press, 2001.
- Academic Articles
  - Mitchell, R. “Enlightenment biopolitics: Population and the growth of genius.” Eighteenth Century, vol. 59, no. 4, Dec. 2018, pp. 405–27. Scopus, doi:10.1353/ecy.2018.0026.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Regulating Life: Romanticism, Science, and the Liberal Imagination^*.” European Romantic Review, vol. 29, no. 3, May 2018, pp. 275–93. Scopus, doi:10.1080/10509585.2018.1465718.
    Full Text
  - Halpern, O., et al. “The smartness mandate: Notes toward a critique.” Grey Room, no. 68, Sept. 2017, pp. 106–29. Scopus, doi:10.1162/GREY_a_00221.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Response.” Genre, vol. 50, no. 1, Apr. 2017, pp. 139–52. Scopus, doi:10.1215/00166928-3761396.
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  - Mitchell, R. “Biopolitics and population aesthetics.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 115, no. 2, Apr. 2016, pp. 367–98. Scopus, doi:10.1215/00382876-3488464.
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  - Mitchell, R. E. “Response to George Teyssott, Key Points: Between Figure and Ground.” Forty Five: A Journal of Outside Research, 2016.
  - Mitchell, R. E. “Romanticism and the Experience of Experiment.” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 46, no. 3, 2015, pp. 132–42.
  - Mitchell, Robert. “Access, entanglement, and prosociality.” The American Journal of Bioethics : Ajob, vol. 13, no. 6, Jan. 2013, pp. 49–51. Epmc, doi:10.1080/15265161.2013.781868.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “US biobanking strategies and biomedical immaterial labor.” Biosocieties, vol. 7, no. 3, Sept. 2012, pp. 224–44. Scopus, doi:10.1057/biosoc.2012.9.
    Full Text
  - Conley, John M., et al. “A trade secret model for genomic biobanking.” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics : A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, vol. 40, no. 3, Jan. 2012, pp. 612–29. Epmc, doi:10.1111/j.1748-720x.2012.00694.x.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Simondon, Bioart, and the Milieux of Biotechnology.” Inflexions, vol. 5, 2012.
  - Mitchell, R., et al. “Response.” Science, vol. 333, no. 6049, Sept. 2011, pp. 1575–76. Scopus, doi:10.1126/science.333.6049.1575-b.
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  - Mitchell, R. “In reply.” Transfusion, vol. 51, no. 5, May 2011, p. 1125. Scopus, doi:10.1111/j.1537-2995.2011.03104.x.
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  - Mitchell, Robert, et al. “Genomics. Genomics, biobanks, and the trade-secret model.” Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 332, no. 6027, Apr. 2011, pp. 309–10. Epmc, doi:10.1126/science.1199554.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Response to Weiskopf.” Transfusion, vol. 51, 2011, pp. 1125–1125.
  - Mitchell, R. “Suspended animation, slow time, and the poetics of trance.” Pmla, vol. 126, no. 1, Jan. 2011, pp. 107–22. Scopus, doi:10.1632/pmla.2011.126.1.107.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Cryptogamia.” European Romantic Review, vol. 21, no. 5, Oct. 2010, pp. 631–51. Scopus, doi:10.1080/10509585.2010.499030.
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  - Pfau, T., and R. Mitchell. “European Romantic Review: Introduction.” European Romantic Review, vol. 21, no. 5, Oct. 2010, pp. 545–51. Scopus, doi:10.1080/10509585.2010.499004.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, Robert. “Blood banks, biobanks, and the ethics of donation.” Transfusion, vol. 50, no. 9, Sept. 2010, pp. 1866–69. Epmc, doi:10.1111/j.1537-2995.2010.02812.x.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R., and C. Waldby. “National biobanks: Clinical labor, risk production, and the creation of biovalue.” Science Technology and Human Values, vol. 35, no. 3, May 2010, pp. 330–55. Scopus, doi:10.1177/0162243909340267.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Blood Banks, Biobanks, and the Ethics of Donation (Invited Editorial).” Transfusion, vol. 50, 2010, pp. 1866–69.
  - Mitchell, R., and T. Pfau. “NASSR 2009 Conference Volume.” European Romantic Review, vol. 21, no. 3, 2010.
  - Mitchell, R., and Thomas Pfau. ““Romanticism and Form” special issue.” European Romantic Review, vol. 21, no. 5, 2010.
  - Mitchell, R. “"Beings that have existence only in ye minds of men": State finance and the origins of the collective imagination.” Eighteenth Century, vol. 49, no. 2, Jan. 2008, pp. 117–39. Scopus, doi:10.1353/ecy.0.0009.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “The fane of Tescalipoca: S. T. Coleridge on the sacrificial economies of systems in the 1790s.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 46, no. 1, Dec. 2007, pp. 105–26.
  - Mitchell, R. “The Transcendental: Deleuze, P. B. Shelley, and the Freedom of Immobility.” Romantic Circles, edited by R. Broglio, vol. Romanticism and the New Deleuze, 2007.
  - Mitchell, Robert. “Sacrifice, individuation, and the economies of genomics.” Literature and Medicine, vol. 26, no. 1, Jan. 2007, pp. 126–58. Epmc, doi:10.1353/lm.2008.0012.
    Full Text
  - Thurtle, P., and R. Mitchell. “The acme novelty library: Comic books, repetition, and the return of the new.” Configurations, vol. 15, no. 3, Jan. 2007, pp. 267–97. Scopus, doi:10.1353/con.0.0038.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Adam Smith and Coleridge on the Love of Systems.” Coleridge Bulletin, vol. 25, 2005.
  - Mitchell, R. E. “"The soul that dreams it shares the power it feels so well": The Politics of Sympathy in the Abolitionist Verse of Williams and Yearsley.” Romanticism on the Net, no. 29–30, Jan. 2003. Scopus, doi:10.7202/007719ar.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “The Violence of Sympathy: Adam Smith on Resentment and Executions.” 1650 1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 8, 2003, pp. 421–41.
  - Mitchell, R. “"The soul that dreams it shares the power it feels so well": The Politics of Sympathy in the Abolitionist Verse of Williams and Yearsley.” Romanticism on the Net, Special Edition, edited by L. Mandell and A. Finch, no. 29–30, 2003.
  - Mitchell, R. “Owning Shit: Commodification and Body Wastes.” Bad Subjects, vol. 55, Mar. 2001.
  - Mitchell, R. “"Here is thy fitting Temple": Science, Technology and Fiction in Shelley’s Queen Mab.” Romanticism on the Net, vol. 21, Feb. 2001.
- Book Sections
  - Mitchell, R. E. Population Aesthetics in Romantic and Post-Romantic Literature (Submitted). Edited by J. Khalip and T. Pyle, Fordham University Press, 2016, pp. 267–89.
  - Mitchell, R. E. “Global Flows: Romantic-era Terraforming.” British Romanticism and Early Globalization: Developing the Modern World Picture, Edited by Evan Gottlieb, Bucknell University Press, 2014, pp. 199–218.
  - Mitchell, R. E., and C. Waldby. “National Biobanks: Clinical Labour, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue (reprint).” Bioethics^TM, edited by J. Zylinska, 2013.
  - Mitchell, R. “Bioart: Media, Evolution, Culture.” Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age, edited by Dmitry Bulatov, vol. 2, BB NCAA, 2013.
  - Mitchell, R. “Bioart e biotechnologie dal punto di vista filosofico di Simondon.” Il Divenire Della Conoscenza: Estetica e Contingenza Del Reale, edited by Anna Long and Roberto Masiero, Mimesis Edizioni, 2013.
  - Mitchell, R. “Sell: Body wastes, information, and commodification.” Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information, 2011, pp. 121–36. Scopus, doi:10.4324/9780203873274.
    Full Text
  - Mitchell, R. “Cryptogamia.” Romanticism and Modernity, Routledge, 2011, pp. 199–219.
  - Mitchell, R., and J. Khalip. “Release—(Non)Origination—Concepts.” Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 1–24.
  - Mitchell, R., and R. Broglio. “Introduction: Romanticism and the New Deleuze.” Romantic Circles Praxis Series: Romanticism and the New Deleuze, edited by R. Broglio, 2007.
  - Mitchell, R. “Beautiful and Orderly Systems: Adam Smith on the Aesthetics of Political Improvement.” New Voices on Adam Smith, edited by Eric Schliesser and Leonidas Montes, Routledge, 2005.
  - Mitchell, R. “$ell: Body Wastes, Information and Commodification.” Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information, edited by Robert Mitchell and Phillip Thurtle, Routledge, 2003.
  - Mitchell, R. “Fraternal Anonymity: Blanchot and Nancy on Community and Mitsein.” The Politics of Community, edited by M. Strysick, The Davies Group, 2001.
- Book Series
  - Mitchell, R., and P. Thurtle, editors. In Vivo: The Cultural Mediations of Biomedical Science. University of Washington Press, 2003.
- Digital Publications
  - Mitchell, R., et al. Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information (DVD-ROM). University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses
- ENGLISH 890T: Tutorial in Special Topics 2021

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Previous Appointments & Affiliations

In the News

Awards & Honors

Selected Grants

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Book Series

Digital Publications

Recent Courses