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Posts Tagged ‘Woolf and Dissidence’

Call for papers for collection from 34th Woolf conference

Posted in call for papers, tagged , , on Saturday 28 February 2026| Leave a Comment »

The organizers of the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, held in London and Sussex last July on the theme of “Woolf and Dissidence,” invite submissions for the upcoming volume in the Virginia Woolf: Selected Papers series.

The volume will add to the digital, open-access series published by Clemson University Press, and will add to the edited collections open to scholars and readers of Woolf from around the world.

The collection will focus on the theme of the 34th annual conference — “Woolf and Dissidence” — and will explore the many forms that dissent takes in Woolf’s work, continuing a conversation about the nature and context of Woolf’s dissidence, while also exploring dissident approaches and responses to Woolf’s writing.

As with previous volumes, between 25 and 30 of the hundreds of papers presented at the conference will be selected for inclusion in the volume.

Submission guidelines and deadline

Submissions should be approximately 2,000-3,500 words, including notes. All submissions must be in Word and follow the Chicago Manual Style Guide. (See further style and formatting guidance here). Authors must secure permissions for quotations or images.

Please send complete, edited papers by March 31 to H.Tyson@sussex.ac.uk.

Please note that submission does not guarantee acceptance; there will be a selection process. Any questions can be sent to Helen Tyson  at H.Tyson@sussex.ac.uk.

At the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Dissidence, Anne Fernald gives a keynote address, “Dangerous Days: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway.”

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In England for the 34th conference: Woolf and Dissidence

Posted in 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Sunday 6 July 2025| 4 Comments »

Woolf readers at one of the exhibit and bookseller tables at the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Roughly 350 scholars from around the globe have gathered at the University of Sussex for the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. And coming from the United States, this year’s topic could not be more timely: Woolf and Dissidence.

As an American living under the destructive regime now ruling my country, I hoped that I and my compatriots would be greeted with empathy and understanding by those we met at this conference in England.

I was not disappointed. I and others from the U.S. have been embraced more warmly than ever by the students, common readers and scholars from around the world who have arrived in Falmer, the English town on the outskirts of Brighton, where the University of Sussex is located.

The universal question

Time for talk during a conference break.

Whether from Turkey, Korea, Brazil, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Canada or the UK, our fellow humans and Woolfians share our disappointment in the country I call my home.

And they almost universally ask the question we Americans have been asking ourselves since last November: “How did this happen?”

Sadly, we have no definitive answer. All we can offer are conjectures, theories, and speculations.

Dangerous words

Notice how I am writing here. I am choosing my words carefully. I am not saying exactly what I mean. Instead, I am offering hints. Instead, I am writing in a kind of code.

Why? I am afraid. Not so afraid that I will be silent, because, as Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.”

But afraid enough to edit myself, to avoid publishing words on the web that might bring attention from the thought police. After all, I would like to get back into the country of my birth.

Clarissa Dalloway’s dangerous world

Which brings me to one of the best things I heard at the conference so far: Fordham University Professor Anne Fernald’s keynote presentation titled “Dangerous Days: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway.”

In it, she talked about the dangers we face in our current political climate and the dangers Clarissa faced in Woolf’s 1925 novel. Clarissa lost her sister at a young age. She lived through the Great War. She survived the influenza pandemic.

Woolf describes Clarissa’s feelings this way:

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always has the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. (MD 8)

I now understand that quote. And I recognize — once again — that Woolf’s words always apply.

Anne Fernald gives her keynote address, “Dangerous Days: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway.”

 

 

 

 

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Call for papers for conference on Woolf and Dissidence

Posted in 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, dissidence, tagged , on Sunday 29 September 2024| Leave a Comment »

Note: The deadline for proposals has been extended to Dec. 13, 2024.

The call for papers for the 34th Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference 2025: ‘Woolf and Dissidence’, to be held at King’s College, London: July 4, 2025, and the University of Sussex: July 5-8, 2025 is out.

July 4 pre-conference events at King’s College include a visit to the King’s Archives and a panel discussion on ‘Virginia Woolf: Creative Engagements’ with contemporary writers and artists speaking about their multi-media engagements with Woolf’s writing. The conference itself runs July 5-8 and will be held at the University of Sussex.
Co-organisers are Helen Tyson (Sussex), Clara Jones (King’s) and Anna Snaith (King’s).
We are delighted to bring the Annual Virginia Woolf Conference back to the UK and to two sites – King’s College London and the University of Sussex – with such strong Woolfian connections. – Helen, Clara and Anna

Overview

Virginia Woolf practised a politics of dissent. From her pacifism, deeply held through two World Wars, to her feminism, Woolf continually wrote back to power. She urged transgression and trespass and ‘thinking against the current’, as she wrote in ‘Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid‘).

Dissent takes many forms in her oeuvre from the overt politics of her major essays to her novelistic defamiliarizing of patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist society. Narratologically, too, her writing swerves and undercuts: its experimentation a form of dissident aesthetics.

The organisers of the 34th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference invite paper, panel, workshop and exhibitions proposals that engage with the theme of ‘Woolf and Dissidence’. They seek to foster conversations about the nature and contexts of Woolf’s

Monk’s House sitting room

dissidence or that of her predecessors, contemporaries and inheritors. What are the limitations of her politics? In what ways did she conform?

In the centenary year of the publication of Mrs Dalloway it is fitting that the 34th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference returns to the UK and to two locations with strong Woolfian connections: King’s College London, where Woolf studied as a teenager, and to Sussex, home to Monk’s House and Charleston.

The conference theme also honours the history of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, founded by Alan Sinfield and Jonathan Dollimore, at the University of Sussex. The Centre’s pioneering work in sexuality and queer studies provides a fitting context for the Woolf conference.

Possible topics

Possible topics could include exploration of Woolf, her contemporaries and the following:

  • political, sexual, gender dissidence: then and now
  • outsiderness and exile
  • the politics of refusal
  • pacifism
  • dissident ecologies and the more-than-human world
  • the rhetoric of dissent
  • organisational, institutional or networks of dissent
  • aesthetic or artistic dissent
  • religious dissent
  • radical, activist or mainstream publishing
  • revolution and activism (in relation to race, gender, sexuality, ecology)
  • convention, orthodoxy or conformity (political, social, literary, aesthetic)
  • dissident readings of Woolf

This list is only a starting point, and organizers encourage all ideas and approaches including transdisciplinary, transhistorical and collaborative work.

Who can submit and possible formats

Organizers welcome submissions from academics, readers, students of Woolf and for:

  • individual papers (1500-characters abstract)
  • panels or roundtables (3000-characters abstract)
  • interactive workshops (3000-characters abstract)
  • exhibits or posters (including digital and material) (3000-characters abstract)
  • a non-traditional (dissident?) form of presentation (3000-characters abstract)

How to apply

Please apply via the submission form on the conference website at:.
https://woolf2025uk/cfp/ Deadline: 29 November 2024.

Questions?

Please direct queries to: virginiawoolf2025@gmail.com

Stairway in the Virginia Woolf Building at King’s College, London. In 2017, a Virginia Woolf exhibit was at the top of the stairs, complete with a life-sized wax statue of Woolf. Read more.

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