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Posts Tagged ‘Anne Fernald’

What happens when a novelist and a scholar get together to discuss Virginia Woolf? Interesting things, as you will see below. But first the back story

The back story

Last week, a Zoom call for members of the International Virginia Woolf Society introduced us to the The Oxford Companion of Virginia Woolf (2021), edited by Anne Fernald and published by the Oxford University Press.

On that call, we met many of the prominent international scholars who contributed the 39 original essays that appear in the volume. They include Urmila Seshagiri, Elsa Högberg, Vara Neverow, Elizabeth Outka, and Roxana Robinson, whose novel Sparta (2013) I used in a class I taught on women and war.

The YouTube video

During the discussion about the handbook, Fernald mentioned an April 5 discussion she had with Robinson about Virginia Woolf, which is now posted on YouTube.

In it they talk about many things, including how they first met Virginia Woolf, what she has to say to us today, and Fernald’s vision for the essays she included in The Oxford Companion of Virginia Woolf.

As she puts it, “I wanted to make a new pattern for what we know about Woolf’s life.”

Fernald is a professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Issues at Fordham University, editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Mrs. Dalloway (2014) and author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (2006).

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Virginia Woolf’s writing lodge at Monk’s House in Sussex, England

Virginia Woolf’s feminist polemic A Room of One’s Own (1929) continues to matter to women, particularly those who identify as feminists.

In a video presented March 18 by the South Orange Public Library in honor of Women’s History Month, Anne Fernald discusses Woolf’s seminal book. In the hour-long “Virginia Woolf and ‘A Room of One’s Own’ Today,” Fernald discusses rooms, freedom, and how feminist writers and scholars think through Woolf today.

She also asks listeners to imagine what their own room dedicated to creative pursuits might look like.

Fernald is a professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Issues at Fordham University, editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Mrs. Dalloway (2014) and author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (2006).

Virginia Woolf’s desk in her writing lodge at Monk’s House, 2019

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What: Free Talk: “Not Quite So Kind: Woolf and the limits of kindness”
Who: Anne E. Fernald, professor of English and Women’s Studies at Fordham University
When: Nov. 1, 1:30-4:30 p.m. Lunch at 1:30, talk at 2 p.m., refreshments at 3:30.
Where: Fordham London Centre, 2 Eyre Street Hill, London
How: Reserve free tickets.

Anne Fernald

On Woolf and kindness

In Woolf’s 1925 novel, Mrs. Dalloway, kindness has its limits. When the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith and his wife announce theirintention to seek a second opinion from Sir William Bradshaw, their doctor, Dr. Holmes turns on them with stunningly rapid bitterness “if they were rich… by all means let them go to Harley Street; if they had no confidence in him, said Dr. Holmes, looking not quite so kind” (84).

In Mrs. Dalloway and throughout her writing, Woolf explores both the limits of mere kindness and what it means to be of a kind, to be kin, stressing the common root of adjective and noun. This talk unpacks several of Woolf’s key uses of the word kind to explore how, in 2019, we might understand the complex interactions of social cues, intimacy, fondness, and mistrust in Woolf and how those stories continue to resonate today.

About Ann Fernald

A scholar of modernism with a special focus on Virginia Woolf, Fernald is the editor of the Cambridge University Press Mrs. Dalloway (2014), and one of the editors of The Norton Reader, a widely-used anthology of essays. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (2006), as well as articles and reviews on Woolf and feminist modernism. She is a co-editor of the journal Modernism/modernity. She occasionally updates her blog, Fernham, and can be found on twitter @fernham.

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Anne Fernald, professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University, will lead a reading group on Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn.

The cost of the five-session reading group, which begins Tuesday, Feb. 25, is $160.

“These are always really fun ways for brilliant common readers to get together and talk books,” Fernald said.

On Instagram, Fernald reported that a huge photo mural of Woolf dominates one of the landings at the Center.

A screenshot of Anne Fernald’s Instagram post covering the opening night party at the Center for Fiction. Virginia Woolf is featured in a mural that dominates one of the stairway landings.

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Anne Fernald

Anne Fernald

Anne Fernald, Fordham University professor and editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Mrs. Dalloway (2014) and author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (2006), will lead a reading group on two Virginia Woolf novels this fall.

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) will be under discussion every second Thursday for four sessions, beginning Sept. 17, from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Center for Fiction, 17 E. 47th St., New York City. Remaining dates are Oct. 1, Oct. 15 and Oct. 29.

The cost is $150 for members and $175 for non-members.

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