ENGL 085. Virginia Woolf

A prolific novelist, essayist, literary critic, publisher, diarist, and letter writer, Virginia Woolf at once defined and challenged the literary currents of her era. This course will explore the arc of Virginia Woolf’s career from the 1910s to the 1940s, a period coincident with the emergence of British modernism. We will read widely across Woolf’s works, situating them within the seismic cultural and political shifts of the early twentieth century and grappling with their reception in the latter half of the century and beyond. Readings of Woolf have shaped key interventions in narrative theory, modernist studies, feminist and queer theory, among others, and so we will ask: what formal, social, and political commitments shape Woolf’s work? And how do those commitments morph, evolve, or persist into our own time? Expect to read broadly and deeply, discuss thoughtfully, and develop tools to pursue your own archival and critical projects over the course of the semester.

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