Virginia Woolf Society Turkey is hosting yet another free online Woolf seminar, and this one features a talk by Emily Kopley on “Orlando as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.”
What: In this Woolf Seminar, Kopley will explore the correlation between the main character of Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando and the life and writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The event will also commemorate Woolf’s birthday by reciting brief passages from her novels. Who: Kopley is the author of Virginia Woolf and Poetry (2021).
When: Friday, Jan. 26, 7-9 p.m. Turkey time and 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. EST. Cost: Free Registration:Online
Virginia Woolf Society Turkey is hosting another Woolf seminar. This one, set for Dec. 21 at 7 p.m. Turkey time, will feature Christos Hadjiyiannis on “Modernism and Liberalism.”
What: A free online talk on “Modernism and Liberalism.” This talk will explore the intricate relationship between modernist literature and liberal democracy by focusing on how some early twentieth-century English writers in London—E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, T. E. Hulme, and T. S. Eliot—engaged with Edwardian liberalism, a dominant political ideology that championed both reformist policies and more radical New Liberal ideas. Who: Christos Hadjiyiannis, who teaches English Literature at the University of Regensburg. He is the author of Conservative Modernists: Literature and Tory Politics in Britain, 1900-1920 (Cambridge, 2018). With Rachel Potter, he is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics (2023). When: Dec. 21, 7 p.m. Turkey time; 11 a.m. EST. Cost: Free Registration:Register at Eventbrite.
What: A free online talk on “The Surreal Real: Proust, Woolf, and World Cinema,” as part of the Woolf Seminars series of the Virginia Woolf Society Turkey. Who: Delia Ungurenau is associate director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature and associate professor of literary theory in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest. She is the author of From Paris to Tlôn: Surrealism as World Literature and The Poetics of Apocalypse: The Cultural War in Romanian Literary Magazines, 1944-1947 When: Friday, Dec. 8, 6-8 pm Turkey time (10 a.m. – noon EST). Please check your local time. Cost: Free Registration: Registration is free at Eventbrite.
Virginia Woolf Society Turkey is holding another online seminar, and this one covers Virginia Woolf and fashion.
What: A free online talk: “‘She had a flair for beautiful, if individual dresses’: Virginia Woolf’s Style Itineraries,” as part of the Woolf Seminars series of the Virginia Woolf Society Turkey.
When: Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. (Turkey time) or noon-2:30 p.m. EST. Check times for your location.
Who: Antoine Perret, a PhD candidate in English literature at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, will be the speaker.
This talk will explore the intriguing paradoxes surrounding Virginia Woolf’s sartorial style. Deemed highly unfashionable by her contemporaries, she now stands as a style icon, inspiring designers and gracing the pages of fashion magazines. Woolf’s personal relationship with clothes was in itself contradictory, always oscillating between love and hate.
Perret arguesthat Woolf’s shabby looks and ostensible disinterest in dress can be seen as a posture that not only helped crafting her bohemian public persona, but also took part in her subsequent celebration on the fashion scene. Drawing from her fiction, he will eventually explore how Woolf’s distinctive style and fascination with dress also influenced her literary use of clothes.
About the speaker
Antoine Perret is a PhD candidate in English literature at Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Supervised by Professor Catherine Lanone and Dr. Floriane Reviron-Pi?gay, he is currently writing a doctoral thesis on fashion, style, and modernism, focusing particularly on the works of E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Rhys. Arguing for a material approach to literary modernism, his research addresses the role of clothing within the diegesis, while also exploring the concept of fashion taken as a social phenomenon, in particular its influence on the literary community and on aesthetic practices, so as to interrogate the modalities of modernism and its reception.
Virginia Woolf is becoming ever more popular in Turkey. Tuesday, we posted about a new platform for budding Turkish writers who have an interest in Woolf. Today, we share news of a free online event focused on Woolf and literary history that is part of the Virginia Woolf Society Turkey’s Woolf Seminar series.
What: A free online talk on “Unwriting and Rewriting History and Literary History: Woolf’s Fictions and Essays,” as part of the Woolf Seminars series of the Virginia Woolf Society Turkey.
Who: Anne Besnault, senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Rouen – Normandy, France, will be the speaker.
Date: Friday, September 29 Time: 7 p.m. Turkey time or noon EST. (Please check your local time.) Cost: Free. Registration: Everyone is welcome to register and attend, using this Eventbrite link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/…/unwriting-and-rewriting…
About the talk
The aims of Besnault’s talk are:
to introduce the audience to Woolf’s historical thought, as seen from the vantage point of the past and contemporary historiographical discourses;
to offer a new vision of Woolf as a literary historian essentially interested in the textuality of history;
and to uncover the specific coherence of her history of nineteenth-century women’s literature beyond its apparent heterogeneity and contradictory impulses.
About Besnault
Besnault’s research focuses on modernist fiction and criticism, short story theory, genre and gender studies in nineteenth- and twentieth century British literature, literary history, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf’s essays and fiction.
