After conferring with Amy Smith (the 2021 Woolf Conference organizer) and the ACVW Steering Committee, the Program Committee for #vwoolf2020 has decided to postpone this summer’s conference until next summer. Profession and Performance will now take place June 2021 (specific dates TBD). After conferring with her administration, Amy Smith has confirmed that she will now organize the 2022 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.
We are so grateful to Amy (the best) as well as to the Steering Committee for their support during this strange, troubling time.
Anyone who had a proposal accepted for Profession and Performance will be automatically accepted next year. We’re still working out new dates, so you may have to wait a bit to know whether or not you will be able to attend. Please refrain from letting us know whether you’ll be attending (or not) until we get firm 2021 dates settled. Of course, if you have any questions for us, we’re happy to hear from you, and we’ll answer them as best we can!
Know that we will be reopening the CFP later this year, so if you would like to submit a differentproposal than the one you originally submitted, you will be free to do so at that time. We realize that your projects may look very different in a year’s time.
This is not an easy email to write or to share, but please know that we feel this is, absolutely, the right decision. Whether or not the spread of COVID-19 has been mitigated by June (we’ll see), it seems unthinkable to ask people to pay for registration or book travel now when so many travel bans, curfews, and other policies limiting social interaction are in place. Stay safe, practice social distance, and flatten that curve. We hope to see many (if not all of you!) in Vermillion, SD in June 2021.
Sending love,
Ben (and the rest of the South Dakota Woolf Pack)
—
Benjamin D. Hagen, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Assistant Professor | 20th-Century British and Anglophone Literature
University of South Dakota | Department of English
Below is information provided by email from conference organizers.
Top four plenary events
Conference organizers have lined up four plenary events.
The conference will include a plenary performance. Ellen McLaughlin and Kathleen Chalfant have collaborated and will present THE PARTY—a one-woman play written by McLaughlin that weaves together three stories Woolf wrote while working on Mrs. Dalloway – “The New Dress,” “Together and Apart,” and “A Summing Up.” All three stories take place at Mrs. Dalloway’s party. All the words are Woolf’s, and all the characters are played by Chalfant. Organizers say they are also hatching an additional performance piece.
Mary Gordon, Rachel Dickstein and Ellen Mclaughlin at a performance of “Septimus and Clarissa” in New York City in October 2011.
Carrie Rohman of Lafayette College will deliver a plenary lecture. Check out her recent Print Plus article on Isadora Duncan’s “Creatural Aesthetics”. Rohman is also the author of two brilliant studies: Stalking the Subject: Modernism and the Animal (2009) and Choreographies of the Living: Bioaesthetics in Literature, Art, and Performance (2018).
Mark Hussey of Pace University; Urmila Seshagiri of U of Tennessee, Knoxville; Drew Shannon of Mount St. Joseph U; and Jean Moorcroft Wilson of U of London will join us for a plenary panel. The panel will cover a range of issues that will thread through the topics of “Archive, Edition, Life.” See more about them and their work.
We’re also organizing some pre- and post-conference workshops, so if you wish to come early and/or stay late, you’ll definitely want to participate in these.
Vermilion, South Dakota and USD welcome you
Conference organizers wrote, “And one more thing: We want to be clear. We are not our legislature. The University of South Dakota and Vermillion will provide a safe, cozy, welcoming place to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. We’re going to have a lot of fun, take care of, and learn so much from each other.”
Where: University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD, U.S.A.
Twitter: @vwoolf2020
“Profession and Performance,” the theme of the 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, calls to mind not only Woolf’s sense of herself as a writer (her profession) but also the set of specialized occupations she takes up in A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), areas of study and livelihoods traditionally reserved for the sons of educated men.
It also invokes the conference’s commitment over the past three decades to the arts, to theater, to music, to the spoken word, and to the resonances of these media with the performance/performativity of Woolf’s life and writing.
“Profession and Performance” might also encourage us to reflect on the conference’s rich history and to consider the ways in which the professions of those who support and attend the conference might be changing. As an event open to all scholars, students, and common readers of Woolf and Woolfian connections, we encourage 2020 participants to sound and explore echoes of past professions and performances in our present ones.
Possible topics
The 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf invites papers addressing these issues as well as other topics addressing “Profession and Performance,” including, but not limited to:
contemporary adaptations of Woolf, her circles, or her work on stage / screen (e.g., Vita and Virginia; Life in Squares; etc.)
the dynamic link between Woolf’s social critique (what she professed) and her art (its performance)
the rich archive of scholarship that brings together studies of the avant-garde, modernism, and the middlebrow
intersections of modernist studies and performance studies
modernism’s role in the professionalization of literature and criticism
the livelihoods and lifestyles of Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group
investigations of identity and community
Woolfian meditations on professions (i.e., on occupations, commitments, allegiances, and declarations)
interpretations of Woolf-inspired performance art (e.g., music, dance, theater)
profession as (public) performance
questions of affect and attachment
strong and weak performances / professions / modernisms
reflections on the selves and the worlds we profess / perform in daily life, in politics, in ethics, in institutions, and in ongoing efforts to teach and learn
the performative life of professionalization (or the subversion of professionalization)
life-writing as performance of self, professionalization of self
gendered performances / performances of gender (on stage / page, in life)
professions for women (history of, literary treatments of, performances of)
Woolf and developments in medical sciences and psychology
the life of the feminist academic; the professionalization and/or institutionalization of feminism outside of academia
Proposal parameters and deadline
Abstracts of maximum 250 words for single papers and 500 words for panels should be sent to Virginia.Woolf@usd.edu by Feb. 10, 2020. In addition to traditional presentations, organizers encourage proposals for workshops (such as bookmaking, translation, publishing, forming writing groups, etc.) and proposals for roundtable or group discussions (such as feminist / queer perspectives, Woolfian pedagogy, staging / performing Woolf, etc.).
For accepted proposals, we ask well ahead of time that presenters bring access copies of their presentations to their panels.
A few caveats: the organizers ask that all abstracts and proposals be submitted in English. Also, to ensure a more effective exchange among all participants, we ask that non-English presentations be accompanied by a handout of main points in English as well as (if possible) a PowerPoint presentation in English. Note that Q&A sessions will be conducted in English as well.
For more information
More information about the 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf will be made available in the coming months. Contact conference organizer Benjamin Hagen, at Benjamin.Hagen@usd.edu, with questions.
Now you can plan ahead. News of the dates and location of the 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf is in. This milestone conference will be held June 11-14, 2020, at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota.
Benjamin D. Hagen, assistant professor in the Department of English, is organizing the event. More details will follow.
The 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf will be held atMount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 6-9, 2019.
