Two Virginia Woolf events will take place this week, one on Thursday, one on Friday, and both on Zoom. In the first, Maria Oliviera discusses the reception of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) in Brazil. In the second, Amy Smith considers Woolf’s critical engagement with Platonism in her 1919 novel Night and Day.

“A Room of One’s Own in Brazil” seminar

Who: Maria Oliviera, professor, Federal University of Paraiba
What: This first session of the “A Room of One’s Own Around the Globe” seminar will discuss the reception of Woolf’s 1929 polemic in Brazil. Presented in English.
When:  6 p.m. CTE; noon EST on Thursday, November 20. Check your time zone.
Where: On Zoom. Free and open to all.
Get more details: Get the Zoom link in order to attend.

About the project: 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.

“‘Dreams and Realities’: Woolf’s Revisions to Plato in Night and Day — a talk

Who: Amy Smith, associate professor of English at Lamar University and author of Virginia Wool’s Mythic Method.
What: A talk for the Virginia Woolf Society of Turkey titled “‘Dreams and Realities’: Woolf’s Revisions to Plato in Night and Day. Presented in English.
When: 7 p.m. Turkey time on Friday, November 21.
Where: On Zoom. Free and open to all.
Get more details: Register online for the event in order to attend. The Zoom link will then be provided.

About the talk: The intellectual significance of Night and Day in Woolf’s development as a writer and thinker has long been overlooked. In her talk, Amy considers Woolf’s critical engagement with Platonism in the novel, where it appears both as a genre model and as a reservoir of imagery, to which Woolf makes polyvalent references that disrupt Platonic idealism. Woolf’s active wrestling with Plato suggests that she is processing and separating from early philosophical influences just as she is from her inherited models of love, marriage, and the correct life for a woman, and also from conventional models of writing in her emerging in her modernist stories and aesthetic theory. Equally important as the aesthetic and personal revolutions Woolf makes at this moment is her philosophical revolution, and wrestling with Plato is a necessary step in her development of a unique, mature philosophy of her own.

About the book: Amy’s book, Virginia Woolf’s Mythic Method, is also now available in paperback. Use code SMITH at http://www.ohiostatepress.org for 40% off the hardcover or paperback.