Here is the first. On the morning of the second day of the conference, I was sitting in the Fairfield Inn lobby sipping the truly bad coffee and trying to wake up.
Vara Neverow sat down to chat with me, and soon afterward, Catherine joined us. I had never met Catherine, but as soon as Vara mentioned Catherine’s penchant for mountain climbing, my still sleepy ears perked up.
“You’re the mountaineer,” I cried. “You’re Catherine. Hollis.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Who are you?”
“I’m weather,” I replied. And she immediately knew what I meant.
Of course, that sent us all into gales of laughter. No pun intended. And we told and retold that little story throughout the conference. But just in case any of you missed hearing it, I have repeated it here.
Now for the second tale, which Catherine shared with me today via e-mail. I will leave the telling to one of the participants, Catherine Gregg, author of Virginia Woolf and ‘Dress Mania’: ‘the eternal and insoluble question of clothes’, another of the monographs introduced by Cecil at the June conference.
Catherine has posted the story on the Bookslut blog, so I’ll just give you a teaser. Her tale involves a ratty dressing gown, a parcel of books, a bottle of wine and Cecil Woolf. Read on.
The sensation of swimming in deep water also goes along with the theme for the conference, which was “Virginia Woolf and the Natural World.” That means we heard much about Woolf and flowers, Woolf and fauna, Woolf and birds, Woolf and water and even Woolf and weather, one of my favorite topics. In fact, Gill Lowe, of University Campus Suffolk presented a paper on “Wild Swimming” as part of the first panel of the conference.
Woolf’s depth and stamina were illustrated by the variety of papers, panels, presentations and keynote speeches given at the conference. Here are some sparse notes on just a few.
Elisa Kay Sparks actually counted Woolf’s references to individual varieties of flowers for her presentation, “Virginia Woolf’s Literary and Quotidian Flowers: A Bar-Graphical Approach,” which included a spectacular slide show.
Ecofeminism — and Woolf’s connection to it — were the topics of Bonnie Kime Scott, whose keynote opened the conference, and Diana Swanson, who closed it. Scott made the point that Woolf fuses her natural images with the manmade world, and Swanson said Woolf inspires us to protect our fragile environment, an especially poignant message as oil from BP’s exploded well continues to pollute the Gulf of Mexico.
Valentina Mazzei and her Woolf bust
An opening night reception at the Anne Wright Wilson Fine Arts Gallery on campus featured glorious artwork from numerous artists around the world. Valentina Mazzei of Rome exhibited her delicately beautiful bronze bust of Woolf, which attracted much attention.
A fantastic panel on nature in both urban and rural environments — and the conflict between the two — featured papers by Teresa Boyer, Tonya Krouse and Mark Hussey. Discussion ranged from the street singer in Mrs. Dalloway to the way weather interrupts the narrative in The Years to the reflection of the public discussion of concerns surrounding the demise of the countryside in the 1920s and 1930s in Between the Acts.
War as the ultimate anti-pastoral was Kimberly Coates‘ theme, while Austin Riede discussed the debilitating effect of shell shock on its victims.
Beth Rigel Daugherty’s rapid-fire delivery of Woolf quotes about horses and “taking her fences” energized and entertained the audience, while Emily Bingham‘s surprising talk about Henrietta Bingham’s connection to the Bloomsbury Group set everyone buzzing.
Patrizia Muscogiuri, who presented a paper about Woolf’s thalassic aesthetics, and Cecil Woolf, publisher
Keiko Okaya Tanaka, Vanessa Underwood and Drew Patrick Shannon were part of an illuminating panel about St. Ives, the Isle of Skye and To the Lighthouse. And after Shannon explained the obvious but heretofore unrecognized connections between Woolf’s novel and Jill Paton Walsh’s children’s books, Goldengrove and Unleaving, many listeners probably added them to their Woolf-related reading lists.
During a panel that included Diane Gillespie and Jane Goldman, Leslie Kathleen Hankins shared slides of two drawings she discovered while leafing through Woolf’s original reading notebooks.
Verita Sriratana, Ph.D. candidate at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland
And I was thrilled to discover another Woolf reader and scholar who is exploring Woolf’s use of weather in her novels. Verita Sriratana presented a well-researched paper on weather in The Years, and she plans to include her work as a chapter in her Ph.D. thesis, “`Making Room’: Virginia Woolf and Technology of Place.” As part of our “Weather and Woolf” panel, I discussed Woolf’s use of weather in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando.
These are just a few highlights of a wonderful conference that left me refreshed, exhilarated, exhausted, and dizzy with ideas. For more, read Vara Neverow’s post-conference blog post and listen to Kristen Czarnecki’s pre-conference interview with NPR affiliate WUKY-FM.
Molly’s accomplishments are impressive. She wrote a companion book on Mrs. Dalloway that illuminates the hidden and misunderstood in one of Virginia Woolf’s most well-read novels. Called Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: Invisible Presences, it is designed for both teachers and students and is available from Clemson University Digital Press.
She is also the author of “The Pseudo-Homeric World of Mrs. Dalloway,” which was published in the January 1999 issue of Twentieth Century Literature, and “The Midday Topos,” published in the Winter 1990 issue of that same publication.
Sally Potter’s “Orlando,” the 1992 film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel that covers 400 years of British history, will be re-released in theaters this summer.
The film is scheduled to be shown in New York and Los Angeles on July 23. It stars Tilda Swinton in the title role, with Jimmy Somerville and Quentin Crisp.
Sartorial Bloomsbury Chair: Jane Garrity, University of Colorado, Boulder Presenters: Catherine Mintler, University of Oklahoma: “Bloomsbury’s Underwear: The Petticoat and Other Sartorial Fetishes;” Celia Marshik, SUNY Stony Brook, “Ottoline Morrell, Bloomsbury, and Avant-Garde Dress;” Garrity, “Vanessa Bell’s Sartorial Primitivism”
Bloomsbury and Africa
Chair: Danell Jones, Montana State University, Bozeman Presenters: Jeanne Dubino, Appalachian State University, “An Anti-Imperialist League of Their Own: The Hogarth Press, Kenya, Norman Leys, and Parmenas Githendu Mockerie;” Martyn Downer, independent scholar, “Bunga Bunga: The Language of the 1910 Dreadnought Hoax;” Laura Winkiel, University of Colorado, Boulder, “From Cosmopolitanism to Anti-Imperialism: William Plomer, the Hogarth Press, and Colonial Critique”
Dirt, Desire Recollection: James Joyce and Virginia Woolf
Chair: Bonnie Kime Scott, San Diego State University Presenters: Bonita Rhoads, Charles University, Prague, “Woolf’s Gothic Modernism: Spirited Feminism in To the Lighthouse;” Katherine Merz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Shitting on Empire: Metropolitan Abjection and Colonial Returns;” Abby Bender, New York University, “The Crumbs of Ulysses;” Richard Brown, University of Leeds, “Joyce, Woolf, and the Philosophy of Dirt.”
