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Posts Tagged ‘International Virginia Woolf Society’

How the Virginia Woolf community can aid Turkey

Posted in Woolf societies, Woolfians Connect, tagged , , , , , on Monday 13 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf asked questions of the moment: How can we prevent war? What does a woman need to be able to write fiction? Now, with the death toll from the Feb. 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria currently at 36,000 and climbing, the Woolf community asks the question of this moment: How can we help?

Ben Hagen, president of the International Virginia Woolf Society, reached out to Mine Özyurt Kılıç of Turkey, who is involved in the formation of the non-profit Virginia Woolf Studies in Turkey Initiative, to ask just that question.

She shared information provided by two colleagues, and we have copied it below. It includes frightening facts about the 7.8-magnitude devastating quake, along with information about how to help.

Facts about the earthquake

  • The earthquake that hit the region was equal to 130 atomic bombs.
  • It hit 10 major cities in Türkiye and Syria.
  • Nearly 7,000 buildings have been confirmed to have collapsed.
  • The area affected by the Turkish/Syrian earthquake is the size of the entire United Kingdom.
  • There has never been another earthquake that affected such a large area in history.
  • The biggest reason for the destruction is that the earthquake was very close to the surface and therefore the damage to infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports is very high.

How we can help

According to Mine’s colleagues, the best way to support people in the devastated areas is to donate to the following organizations:

AHBAP is a Turkish organization that describes itself as a “cooperation movement that works with value systems based on solidarity, sharing, and belonging.” The network provides “all kinds of aid” to those in need, including cash transfers and in-kind support. Through their support, they seek “to create contemporary and sustainable networks of cooperation and solidarity” that use new models that ensure they “protect local cultures.” Donations can be sent through their website as well. The organization has also created and will update a list of community centers and businesses that have opened their doors to those seeking refuge.

AFAD is Türkiye’s official disaster and emergency management authority.
This website has some useful information as well: https://www.afetbilgi.com/. Be sure to click on the small box in the middle near the top to choose your language preference.

Please share this information with your personal and academic circles/groups/networks as much as possible to help the victims! Please raise awareness on social media!

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Learning, essaying with Virginia Woolf is IVWS Fall Lecture

Posted in 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, essays, events, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Saturday 20 August 2022| Leave a Comment »

Interested in Virginia Woolf’s essays? Wondering how the lessons from her essays apply to teaching and learning? Then you won’t want to miss Beth Rigel Daugherty’s talk, “Learning and Essaying: From Adeline Virginia Stephen to Virginia Woolf” on Oct. 10, the 2022 International Virginia Woolf Society Fall Lecture.

The event will run from 1–2:30 p.m. ET (New York). See timezone adjustments below, but please doublecheck the times:

10–11:30 a.m. PT (Los Angeles)
2–3:30 p.m. (Brasilia)
6–7:30 p.m. BST (London)
7–8:30 p.m. CEST (Paris)
[Oct 11] 2–3:30 a.m. JST (Tokyo)
[Oct 11] 4–5:30 a.m. AEDT (Sydney)

Members of the International Virginia Woolf Socity will receive a Zoom link for this event closer to the date. If you are not a member, you can join now.

Learning and Essaying

In her talk, Beth will guide viewers through her newly published book, Virginia Woolf’s Apprenticeship: Becoming an Essayist, from the Edinburgh University Press and preview her sequel, Virginia Woolf’s Essays: Being a Teacher.  With the follow-up volume, Beth says, “I hope to clarify how her essays continue to teach and to encourage readers to join the literary conversation.”

Get a taste of Beth’s book, as well as her talk, in this interview posted on EUP’s website.

About Beth

Recently retired from Ohio’s Otterbein University, Beth Rigel Daugherty taught modernist English literature, Virginia Woolf, and Appalachian and Native American literature, along with many thematically focused writing courses, for 36 years.

Her plenary talk at the 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, “On the Ethics of Teaching: Virginia Woolf’s Essays,” received accolades from everyone who heard it.

Beth fell in love with Virginia Woolf and her essays while at Rice University and has been presenting and publishing on both ever since. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in edited collections; editions of the “How Should Read a Book?” holograph draft and Woolf’s fan letters in Woolf Studies Annual; and, with Mary Beth Pringle, the Modern Language Association teaching volume on To the Lighthouse.

Beth Rigel Daugherty (at far left), Leslie Hankins and Diane Gillespie presented a panel on “Portraying and Projecting Age, Ageism, and Activism” at the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, with its theme of social justice, at the University of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati in June of 2019.

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Woolfians share reminiscences of 30 years of conferences

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, International Virginia Woolf Society, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf Miscellany, tagged , , , , , , on Monday 24 January 2022| Leave a Comment »

One of the benefits of being a member of the International Virginia Society is receiving copies of the society’s publication, the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.

AnneMarie Bantzinger

The latest installment, Issue 98, is now online. It features the special topic “The First Thirty Annual (International) Conferences on Virginia Woolf,” edited by AnneMarie Bantzinger.

The collection, solicited in 2019, offers a collage of reminiscences and memories that evoke the conference experiences from multiple perspectives, those of organizers and participants.

Among them is one I wrote about the 2009 conference in New York City. I’m sharing it here.

Woolf and the City: Wow!

For a girl born in Brooklyn, transplanted to Ohio at the age of three, and engaged in a longtime love affair with both Virginia Woolf and New York, could there be anything better than a Woolf conference in New York City? I think not.

Conference organizer Anne Fernald and Megan Branch, Fordham student, at Woolf and the City

And that is why “Wow!” was my immediate reaction to Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ten years later that is still my emotional response when I think of that 2009 event, which is why I chose the New York City conference as my personal hands-down favorite among the ten Woolf conferences I have attended.

Held June 4-7 at Fordham University on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and organized by Anne Fernald, the conference was the second I had attended. But it was the first one I wrote about on Blogging Woolf, the site I created in July of 2007. Now, those blog posts, including one aptly titled “In the aftermath of Woolf and the City, one word — Wow!” help me recall the high points of the conference I described as “dynamite.”

Notable scholars, authors, readers

It featured 50 panels, attracted 200 Woolf scholars and common readers from around the globe, and introduced me to notable authors I never dreamed I would meet.

Ruth Gruber at Woolf and the City

One was Dr. Ruth Gruber, who died in 2016. Ninety-seven at the time of the conference, she was known as a journalist, photographer, and the author of Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman (1935).

She shared fascinating stories of her 1930s experiences as a journalist who visited the Soviet Arctic and a writer who met Virginia and Leonard Woolf in their Tavistock Square flat.

I remember chatting with this redhead curbside as she patiently waited for the cab that would take her home.

Novel writer and keynote speakers

Susan Sellers

Another was Susan Sellers, author of Vanessa and Virginia, the novel based on the relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, which was receiving rave reviews in the US at the time. I recall her graciousness as she signed books and chatted with readers.

Others I listened to, but did not meet, included keynote speaker Rebecca Solnit, a prolific author whose work is so timely and compelling today, and Tamar Katz of Brown University who spoke about the importance of “pausing and waiting” in life and in Woolf.

From a walking stick to rock music

What else struck my fancy? Here’s the list:

  • A visit to the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, where we were treated to a private viewing of pieces in the Virginia Woolf collection, including the walking stick rescued from the River Ouse after her death. Being there felt more sacred than church.
  • A performance of the 2004 play Vita and Virginia, written by Dame Eileen Atkins and directed by Matthew Maguire, director of Fordham’s theatre program.
  • A performance that combined rock-out music from an L.A. band called Princeton with dance from the Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre as the group performed cuts from its four-song album “Bloomsbury” based on the lives of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey.
  • And, of course, the cherished presence of Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson and their collection of Bloomsbury Heritage Series monographs, including my first, which debuted at that conference — Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf: Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels — making Woolf and the City extra memorable.

Cecil Woolf and Jean Moorcroft Wilson at Woolf and the City in 2009

 

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Proposals for Woolf panel at MLA 2023 due Dec. 17

Posted in call for papers, tagged , , , on Saturday 4 December 2021| Leave a Comment »

Now is the time to submit panel proposals on Virginia Woolf for the Modern Language Association Convention, scheduled for Jan. 5-8, 2023, in San Francisco. Submissions are due Dec. 17.

The International Virginia Woolf Society will have one guaranteed panel on Woolf at the 2023 Convention. The group can also submit one additional panel proposal (which is often accepted but not guaranteed). And it can also collaborate with another allied organization and submit a third panel proposal. These joint panels elicit especially lively, productive exchanges.

Guidelines for submissions

  • Note that this is a call for panel proposals, not individual paper proposals.
  • Please submit one topic only. The submission should include the following:
    • a maximum 35-word description (word count includes title)
    • the name(s) and contact information of the proposed organizer(s)

How to submit

Please submit your proposal to Benjamin Hagen, president of the IVWS, via email to Benjamin.Hagen@usd.edu with the subject line Woolf MLA 2023. The submission deadline is Dec. 17, 2021.

Once proposals are in, Hagen will send them out to IVWS members for a vote. Anyone who wishes to propose a session of their own outside of the IVWS process can visit the MLA website.

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Three calls for papers on Virginia Woolf

Posted in call for papers, tagged , , , on Saturday 13 March 2021| Leave a Comment »

CFP #1: Modern Language Association – International Virginia Woolf Society Affiliated Organization Session (Guaranteed Panel)

Topic: Virginia Woolf, Hope and Wonder

See attachment for fuller description. This session will explore the question, “Where and how do we see hope and wonder in Woolf’s earliest memories, her responses to war, and her approaches to making meaning?”  Submit a CV and 300-word abstract by March 15, 2021 to Angela Harris (angela.cat.harris@gmail.com).

CFP #2: Modern Language Association – International Virginia Woolf Society Session (Possible Panel)

Topic: Woolf’s 21st Century Academia

In our profession, we have an opportunity to create what Virginia Woolf envisioned as a totally new version of higher education in the 21st century, that of “an experimental college, an adventurous college…The aim of the new college, the cheap college, should be not to segregate and specialise, but to combine. It should explore the ways in which mind and body can be made to co-operate; discover what new combinations make good wholes in human life” (Three Guineas 43).

This panel will inspire productive conversation around the idea of Woolf’s 21st century notion of what academia might look like—exploring the myriad ways in which we, as professors, graduate students, undergraduates, bloggers, and common readers alike, might realize her collaborative vision in our teaching and scholarship today and in the increasingly uncertain future of academia. Please send a 250-300 word abstract and your contact information by March 15, 2021 to emhinnov@yahoo.com.

CFP #3: Louisville Conference

The International Virginia Woolf Society is pleased to host its twenty-second consecutive panel at the University of Louisville’s Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, scheduled for February 25-27, 2022. We invite proposals for critical papers on any topic concerning Woolf’s work. A specific panel theme may be decided upon depending on the proposals received. Previous IVWS panels have met with great enthusiasm at Louisville, and we look forward to another successful session.

Please submit by email a cover page with name, email address, mailing address, phone number, professional affiliation, and title of paper, and a second anonymous page containing a 250-word paper proposal, with title, to Emily M. Hinnov, ehinnov@ccsnh.edu, by Monday, August 30, 2021.

Panel Selection Committee
Beth Rigel Daugherty
Jeanne Dubino
Vara Neverow

Virginia Woolf reading at home

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