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'Attitudes with a shawl': performance, femininity, and spectatorship at the Italian opera in early nineteenth-century London

Cowgill’s chapter appears in a volume she co-edited with Hilary Poriss. This is the first collection of work on prima donnas to relinquish a focus on the narrative construction of women in opera in favour of the cultural-historical study of the singers themselves – analysing their changing skills and attributes, the myths and discourses surrounding them, and their representation in the visual, dramatic and literary arts. International contributions were invited from a wide range of disciplines, drawing on a mix of methodologies to address the themes of promotion and image-making, fantasy and representation, and cultures of celebrity. Cowgill and Poriss were equal partners in the conception and development of the project, for which Cowgill obtained funding from the World Universities Network (WUN). They jointly edited all contributions and co-authored the extended introduction, which contextualises the book within the development of feminist musicology, gender studies in opera, and the emergence of interdisciplinary celebrity studies. The proposal and manuscript were extensively peer-reviewed and publication was supported by the American Musicological Society’s Dragan Plamenac endowment. The volume was shortlisted for the 2013 Ruth A. Solie award.