The next Woolf Seminar by the Virginia Woolf Society of Turkey is set for March 6 at 7 p.m. Turkey time, with a lecture from Pamela L. Caughie on “Virginia Woolf in the Age of a New Aurality: Reprising Scholarship on Woolf and Sound 25 Years On.”
The talk will revisit a quarter century of scholarship on sound in Woolf’s works, situating Woolf within the soundscape of modernism and examining the interplay of new technologies, mass culture, and the arts.
Registration and time
Register online at this link to receive the Zoom link. If you do not receive the Zoom link after registering, email virginiawoolfturkiye@gmail.com.
Seven p.m. Turkey time is 11 a.m. EST. Check the lecture time in your zone here.
About the lecturer
Professor Caughie is professor emerita of English and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago, and a former president of the Modernist Studies Association. She has authored two monographs and edited or co-edited several volumes, including including Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2000) and the first comparative scholarly edition of Man into Woman, Lili Elbe’s 1931 life narrative. She serves as Project Director of the Lili Elbe Digital Archive.
Virginia Woolf and the Natural World will be the focus of this year’s Literature Cambridge summer course, which will be held twice — once online and once in person in Cambridge, England.
The live online course will run from Thursday, July 9, to Monday, July 13 (including the weekend). The in-person in Cambridge course is set for Sunday, Aug. 2 to Friday, Aug. 7, with an optional trip to Monk’s House and Charleston on Saturday, Aug. 8.
All of Woolf’s books are deeply interested in the natural world. This year’s course will explore her writing about the sea, woods, clouds, trees, gardens, birds, and much else in five of her great novels.
As always, there will be a rich program of lectures, supervisions, talks, and discussions, plus extra sessions for open discussion. In Cambridge, students will visit places of interest with talks by specialists.
Lecture list
Alison Hennegan, Women and Nature in Jacob’s Room (1922) Karina Jakubowicz, Gardens in To the Lighthouse (1927) Kate Eliot, Land and Sea in The Waves (1931) Trudi Tate, The Weather in History: The Years (1937) Ellie Mitchell, Earth and Sky in Between the Acts (1941)
Provisional list of talks
• Ann Kennedy Smith on “Woolf, Rupert Brooke and the ‘Neo-Pagans’”
• Harriet Baker on “Nature writing in Woolf’s Diary”
• Bonnie Lander Johnson on “Vanishing Landscapes: Saffron”
The cover of Virginia Woolf’s 1933 novel “Flush: A Biography,” which included original drawings by Vanessa Bell.
For Woolf Salon No. 33: Falling in Love with Flush, the focus will be on Woolf’s 1933 biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog Flush.
Though the Woolf Salon Project tends to focus on shorter texts (essays, stories, excerpts), Flush seems fitting for this time of year and is only about 33,000 words long. Even if you can’t finish reading or rereading the novel by Feb. 13, the Salon Conspirators would love to see you on the Zoom call.
Hosts: Salon Conspirators Date: Friday, Feb. 13 Time: 2 p.m. EST (New York), 1 p.m. CST (Chicago), noon MST (Albuquerque), 11 a.m. PST (Los Angeles), 4 p.m. (Rio de Janeiro), 7 p.m. GMT (London), 8 p.m. CET (Paris), 9 p.m. EET (Tallinn), 10 p.m. (Istanbul; Moscow), 4 p.m. JST Sat. 2/14 (Tokyo), 6 a.m. EDT Sat. 2/14 (Sydney) Homework:Flush: A Biography (1933) How to participate: Anyone can join the group. Just contact woolfsalonproject@gmail.com to sign up for the email list and receive the Zoom link.
Background on the Salon
The Salon Conspirators — Ben Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Amy Smith, and Drew Shannon — began the Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decorated plate in the center of this poster features one of 50 plates in the Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932-1934, painted by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and now housed at Charleston.
The reception of A Room of One’s Own in Egypt will be the topic for the fourth session of the A Room of One’s Own Around the Globe seminar on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 6 p.m. (CET) on Zoom, in English.
Who:Hala Kamal of the University of Cairo What: Presented in English, this fourth session of the “A Room of One’s Own Around the Globe” seminar will discuss the reception of Woolf’s 1929 polemic in Egypt. When: 6 p.m. CTE, noon. EST. Check your time zone. Where: On Zoom. Cost: Free and open to all. How: Log in at this Zoom link. ID meeting: 94948594890. Password: 244826
The A Room of One’s Own: Echos and circulation research project offers to take up Virginia Woolf’s landmark essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) and explore its full potential. One question it attempts to answer is what echo chambers has A Room of One’s Own opened up nearly a century after its publication?
Led by Valérie Favre (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Anne-Laure Rigeade (Université Paris Est Créteil), this project will continue until 2029, the centenary of the publication of A Room of One’s Own, and will include seminars, a conference, and a collective publication.
It was Christmas 1933 and Ottoline Morrell gave Virginia Woolf an embroidered silk shawl as a gift. It still exists today as the only remaining piece of Woolf’s clothing, and the National Trust is soliciting funds to help restore it.
Here is a letter of thanks Woolf wrote to Morrell in 1933:
Dearest Ottoline, You are a wonderful woman—for many reasons; but specially for sending a present—a lovely original wild and yet useful present—which arrived on Christmas day. I love being ‘remembered’ as they say; and I hung it on a chair, when the Keynes’s lunched here, and boasted, how you had given it me. What a snob I am aren’t I! But I cant help it. It was a very nice Christmas, as it happened; I had my shawl, and the turkey was large enough and we had cream, and lots of coloured fruits, and sat and gorged—Maynard Lydia Leonard and I. – Monks House, Rodmell, 31 Dec 1933 Letter from Virginia Woolf to Ottoline Morrell
About the shawl repair
Over the years, the fringed shawl was displayed on the back of a wooden chair in Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House. Fragile, faded, stained, and in need of restoration, it was removed in 2023. Last year, the National Trust began raising money to repair it in honor of the centenary of Mrs. Dalloway.
As part of the process, the trust plans to clean the shawl, provide conservation stitching, and add a silk and net lining to add stability. The work is expected to take nearly 400 hours of conservation work at a cost of £26, 000.
About the fundraising
That’s where we come in. Anyone can donate to restore Virginia Woolf’s shawl at this link. I am not certain how long the fundraising will go on, but I know it will be in place until at least the end of February.
The National Trust says it feels “confident that with the addition of a silk lining and carefully considered stitching the planned conservation will strengthen and improve the longevity of the textile, thus slowing its deterioration.”
To be on the safe side, you may also want to send an accompanying email specifying that your donation is for the shawl. The email should be sent to supporter.relations@nationaltrust.org.uk, addressed to Steve Lawrence, Supporter Relations Officer.
At left, draped over a chair, is Woolf’s embroidered shawl, the only remaining piece of her clothing, pictured in her bedroom at Monk’s House in July 2019.
Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House, showing the fireplace with tiles decorated by her sister, Vanessa Bell. Notice the lighthouse motif in the center tiles at the top.
