Module description
Virginia Woolf is one of the most iconic writers of the 20th century. Her image continues to circulate in contemporary culture, a ready signifier of experimental modernism, bohemian London, 1970s feminism, pacifism, madness, and the drive to suicide. She is a writer who has generated an enormous amount of critical and popular attention, her oft-controversial status a result of her interest in culturally troubling questions, those that still preoccupy us in the 21st century. This course will treat a range of Woolf’s work via a focus on reading: both the ways in which she has been read and her own politics of reading. Woolf’s investment in the ‘common reader’ and her related concern with reading publics, public libraries, education and the politics of language make her uniquely situated in the context of the modernist avant garde. We will study a selection of her work across a range of genres, always paying close attention to the historical and political contexts out of which her writing emerged. Her engagement with the politics of difference – class, gender, race, sexuality – will form another thread throughout the course. We will explore the ways in which her experiments in aesthetics intersect with her political concerns. New ways of living and new ways of writing go hand in hand for Woolf.
Assessment details
Coursework
1 x 3000 word essay (85%), oral seminar presentation (15%)
Teaching pattern
One two-hour seminar, weekly