Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf’

Crafting feminism with Virginia Woolf in person and online

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, feminism, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Friday 20 October 2023| 2 Comments »

Do crafting and feminism go together? The answer is yes.

At least they made a great duo on the afternoon of day two of this year’s Virginia Woolf conference. And they are now the topic of a Zoom event set for Wednesday, Nov. 15, at  6-8 p.m. GMT (2-4 p.m. EST).

About the conference craft workshop

Amy E. Elkins, Melissa Johnson, and Catherine Paul presented a craft workshop at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Ecologies at Florida Gulf Coast University. Using typewriters, card catalogues, needle, thread, fabric, paper, and glue, each presenter showed participants how to create a craft that connected to Woolf — or another member of the Bloomsbury group.

About “Crafting Feminism”

Now Elkins is back, along with multi-media artist Kabe Wilson, with a “Crafting Feminism” event she is offering on Zoom, along with Decorating Dissidence, an online platform exploring the role of craft and the decorative from modernism to today.

The event also celebrates the one-year anniversary of Elkins’ Crafting Feminism from Literary Modernism to the Multimedia Present (2022).

Elkins and Wilson will be “in conversation to think through all things modernist archives, methods and materials.” And you can attend for free.

How to register

Sign up for a free ticket.

Read more

For more on crafting feminism related to Woolf — please read “Walking in Mrs. Dalloway’s shoes — literally.” You may also want to check out Crafting With Feminism, a book full of “25 girl-powered projects to smash the patriarchy” and/or the Feminist Activity Book.

Catherine Paul (standing) shows Alice Lowe, Amy Smith, and Lisa Coleman how to use simple embroidery techniques to create a new expression of their feminism, as well as their love of literature, during the craft workshop at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Craft workshop participants at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf used manual typewriters to type new and meaningful verbiage on old cards from library card catalogues.

This was the old card catalogue entry that Woolf scholar Mark Hussey chose at the craft workshop at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Hussey chose to add this wording to the back side of the card above, using a vintage typewriter.

Workshop participants at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf also cut up text, which they threaded through a page with an image of their choice to create interesting juxtapositions.

This was Alice Lowe’s finished project at the craft workshop during day two of the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, held June 8-11 at Florida Gulf Coast University.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Register for online symposium: Woolf & Ecologies II

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , , on Wednesday 4 October 2023| Leave a Comment »

Register to attend the three-day follow-up to the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Ecologies II, set for Oct. 20-22 on Zoom.

The event, sponsored by the International Virginia Woolf Society, includes 12 panel sessions and a keynote by Derek Ryan of the University of Kent and continues the theme of the 2023 conference: “Virginia Woolf and Ecologies.” Ryan’s keynote is titled “Virginia Woolf and the Pyrocene: Fire Ecologies.”

Dates and times

The conference begins at 11:30 a.m. EDT Oct. 20 and ends at 4 p.m. EDT Oct. 22. Please remember to check local times.

What it costs

Registration costs $20, plus a small transaction fee, with proceeds going towards the Suzanne Bellamy Travel Fund, which supports travel to the Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf next June.

How to register

Register via Eventbrite. You will find an outline of the symposium schedule on the registration page, where the full program schedule will be made available soon.

You should receive a confirmation message upon registering, and you will be added to an email list to which organizers will send the requisite Zoom links as the dates of the symposium draw near.

Get more information

If you have any questions about registration or other IVWS business, write to  vwoolfsociety@gmail.com. Direct other questions about the symposium program to woolfecologies@gmail.com.

Read Full Post »

Woolfians meet again after 4-year in-person break

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Saturday 17 June 2023| 7 Comments »

Conference logo designed by Farrah Alkhadra

After four years, we finally met. In person. Elbow to elbow. Face to face. Sitting together. Dining together. Walking together. Rooming together. Collaborating together. Smiling together. Kvetching together. It was bliss.

It was the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, June 8-11 at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Fla., with its theme of Virginia Woolf and Ecologies.

And it was the first in-person gathering of this bonded but welcoming group of Woolf scholars from around the globe since the 2019 conference, Virginia Woolf and Social Justice, at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The organizer and the panels

This year, Laci Mattison was our leader, planning and orchestrating a conference that met — and went beyond — everyone’s expectations. The associate professor & B.A. English program co-Coordinator of the Department of Language & Literature at FGCU planned a conference that included panels ranging from “Vernal Woolf” to “Liquid Woolf” to “Mindfulness and Woolf” and everything in between — including a hands-on craft worshop.

The plenaries

Then there were the plenaries — five of them! They included:

  1. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, widow of Cecil Woolf, Leonard and Virginia’s nephew, gave a talk on “The Legacy of the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press: Through Family Eyes.”

    The legendary Jean Moorcroft Wilson talking about “The Legacy of Leonard and  VirginiaWoolf’s  Hogarth Press: Through Family Eyes” with her usual wit, whimsy, and brilliance.

  2. Asali Solomon talking with great humor about her latest novel, The Days of Afrekete, which incorporates themes of Mrs. Dalloway and more.
  3. Claire Colebrook on “Ecology and Archive,” an ethereal topic way over my head.
  4. Jessica Martell and Vicki Tromanhauser on “Virginia Woolf’s Food Ecologies,” taking apart the British Empire’s industrial food production and adding Woolf’s use of food in her writing.
  5. “Sensuous Pedagogies: A Roundtable,” with Ben Hagen, Beth Rigel Daugherty, Catherine Hollis, Mark Hussey, and Vicki Tromanhauser. This roundtable explored the assignments in Hagen’s The Sensuous Pedagogies of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence in terms of teaching and learning as problems of sensation, emotion or intensity.

The exhibit

Ane Thon Knutsen with her exhibit of “Blue and Green” at University Archives and Special Collections in the Bradshaw Library at FGCU.

Ane Thon Knutsen, a Norwegian artist and designer who specializes in letterpress, exhibited her most recent large-scale work, which brought Woolf’s short piece “Blue and Green,” published in Monday and Tuesday (1921) into the room and up on the walls. More on this later.

Recent virtual conferences

Between the 2019 in-person conference, the 29th, and this year’s came these:

On the way to dinner out, a group of Woolfians spotted a rainbow and happily posed with it.

Happy faces from around the globe dining out in Ft. Myers, Fla.

This year’s Woolf Players ready to read their favorite Woolf passages at the traditional Saturday evening banquet.

Read Full Post »

Virginia Woolf installation by Norwegian artist opens @fgcu

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, art, art exhibits, short stories, tagged , , , , on Saturday 25 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Norwegian multidisciplinary artist Ane Thon Knutsen is at it again — at combining Virginia Woolf and the letterpress, that is.

This time, the Oslo Academy of the Arts professor has debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library.

The Feb. 23 opening reception introduced the installation, which will be on display from now through the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia  Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11. Registration opens in March.

In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapts a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories.

“Knutsen’s artistic research aims to point out the influence typography, particularly typesetting, might have on the content of the text. It speaks to the power of designing and publishing one’s own work,” notes the FGCU Special Collections and Archives website.

Her first Woolf project: a book

In “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” which premiered at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf” at the University of Reading, England, in 2017, Ane produced a hand-set volume that includes Ane’s personal essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting.

Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-printed volume introduced at the 2017 Woolf conference, “A Printing Press of One’s Own”

According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf. The essay reflects upon women’s role in letterpress, and the importance of a room of one’s own in artistic practices.

“In this book I am investigating the first books printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, both in practice and in the written ‘dialogue’ between Virginia Woolf and myself, as we are both self-taught typesetters.”

Her second: up on the walls

In the winter of 2019, Ane had a major installation of Woolf’s first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” (1917) in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.

As described by Nell Toemen, who visited the exhibit and shared her thoughts with Blogging Woolf, Woolf’s story was “handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.”

Page 2 of the “On Being Ill” project

Her third: via Instagram

In March of 2020, as lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, Ane used her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill,“ Woolf’s 1930 essay.

She shared each page on Instagram and she shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.

At the time, she said she was using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill” “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock.”

About Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Call for papers: “Woolf and Ecologies” for 32nd Annual Conference

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, tagged , , on Sunday 4 September 2022| 1 Comment »

The call for papers is out for the 32nd Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference, with the theme of “Virginia Woolf and Ecologies,” which will be held June 8 – 11, 2023, at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Fla.

“Slime Puppies,” courtesy of
Farah Alkhadra

Ecology (noun): ecol·o·gy | \ i-ˈkä-lə-jēn. plural ecologies

1a: a. The branch of biology that deals with the relationships between living organisms and their environment. Also: the relationships themselves, esp. those of a specified organism

1c: In extended use: the interrelationship between any system and its environment; the product of this

– Oxford English Dictionary, “ecology n.”

Questions to consider

Conference organizers invite participants to consider the following questions — and more — when figuring out a topic for their paper proposal that engages with the conference theme:

  • How might Woolf’s writing invite us to think ecologically?
  • How might her political, ethical, and aesthetic engagements open ways of perceiving, imagining, creating, and acting that radically revise the assumptions of anthropocentrism—among them, the separate, superior, and intrinsic value of the human.
  • What implications might ecological thinking have for archival, queer, and crip projects or inquiries shaped by post/decolonial studies and the medical humanities?
  • What is a Woolfian ecology? How might Woolfian ecologies help us map, explore, define, or disrupt concepts of time, place, and scale?
  • How does “ecology” help us think through circuits of exchange, consumption, and capital in Woolf’s writings?
  • Where might we position Woolf or her writings within larger constellations of literary and/or modernist studies?
  • How might a consideration of Woolf and Ecologies together encourage us, as Woolf writes in The Years, to “live…live differently”?

More ideas

Proposals may address ecological concerns in or illuminated by Woolf’s work, but they might alternately explore artistic, social, political, economic, racial, and/or queer ecologies, among others, in or alongside Woolf’s novels, essays, letters, or diaries.

Proposals might address the Anthropocene and anthropocentrism, climate change and the environment, biodiversity and sustainability.

They might also address writing and writing cultures, literary history and allusion, genre and form, intertextuality, cosmopolitan and transnational literary networks, economic and political structures, philosophical or theoretical resonance(s), embodiment, mutation, formation and transformation, autopoiesis, symbiopoiesis, embeddedness, community, temporality, extinction, scarcity, technologies, landscapes, soundscapes, inscapes, affect and sensation, perception, psychogeography, relation and interrelation, naturecultures and culturenatures, ecofeminism, war and peace, institutions, and more.

Papers on members of the Bloomsbury Group and other associates of Virginia Woolf in relation to the conference theme are also appropriate.

In addition to traditional paper and panel proposals, organizers also welcome proposals for roundtables, workshops, and creative projects inspired by this year’s theme from scholars, students, artists, and common readers of all backgrounds and disciplines.

Non-English presentations welcome

The conference welcomes proposals for presentations in languages other than English to foster a more open exchange at this international conference. We do, ask, however, that all abstracts and proposals be submitted in English and that non-English presentations be accompanied by a handout or slide deck of main points in English. Please note that Q&A sessions will be conducted in English, as well.

How to submit your proposal abstract

Abstracts of 250 words maximum for single papers and 500 words for panels, roundtables, and workshops will be due on Jan. 25, 2023. The submission portal is available on the conference website.

Send queries to Laci Mattison at vwoolf2023@fgcu.edu

Read Full Post »