News for Woolfians
Call for Papers: Woolf Contemporaine/A Contemporary Woolf
Posted 6 November 2009Where: An International Conference organised by the French Virginia Woolf Society in Aix-en-Provence (Université d’Aix-Marseille I)
When: Sept. 18-19, 2010
“On or about December 1910, human character changed.” One century after this new beginning, we invite you to reflect on Virginia Woolf’s relation to the contemporary, and on how she is inscribed in time, and in her time, “being that which we are, that which we have made, that in which we live” (“How It Strikes a Contemporary”, 1925).
If being contemporary means not abiding by the strictures of the present, but rather, as Giorgio Agamben maintains in his essay “What is the Contemporary ?” grasping the meaning of one’s time from outside, what does this imply about Woolf’s contemporaneity, both in terms of her own era, and in terms of our present ? To what extent does her fictional as well as non-fictional work reflect on or engage with those forms of untimeliness or out-of-timeness which enable an author to “see its shadows” or “perceive its obscurity” ?
Our principle aim will be to explore the ways in which Woolf conceives of modernity. How do her texts display an awareness of the barbarity as well as of the culture of her century ? How do they relate the present to the past and the future ? And how might we today be “contemporaries” of her texts, and see in them figurations of our own century, our own times ? How can we as readers define those moments in the text when Woolf’s writing becomes contemporary now, and as such generates works to come ? These are some of the questions which can incite us to reflect on Virginia Woolf’s contemporaneity at the same time as we contemplate our own.
Considering Woolf as a contemporary implies thinking about history outside chronological sequence and positing the present as a crossroads between epochs, between generations —in other words conceiving the present caught in the tension of temporalities as Woolf describes it at the end of her essay
“How it Strikes a Contemporary”: “scan the horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way for masterpieces to come.”
Submission guidelines: Papers can be given in French or English. Submissions of up to 250 words should be addressed to Claire Davison-Pégon at davisonpegon@gmail.com or Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biasio at Amdibiasio@neuf.fr by Jan. 15, 2010. A final answer will be sent out by March 15.
Call for Proposals: 126th Modern Language Association Meeting
Posted 6 November 2009You are invited to submit a panel topic for the Los Angeles MLA. Note that this is a call for panels, not individual paper proposals. Please submit only one topic. We will need from you:
- A 35-word description (word count includes title)
- The name(s) and contact information of the proposed organizer(
Submit to Georgia Johnston electronically or by mail (electronic strongly preferred, topic line Woolf MLA 2011).
Submission Deadline: Nov. 16, 2009, for the receipt of proposals. IVWS voting on the resulting proposals will be completed in December, so as to meet MLA deadlines. If you wish to propose your own special session outside of the IVWS process, please go to the MLA Web site.
IVWS calls for Woolf papers for Louisville Conference
Posted 12 August 2009The International Virginia Woolf Society invites proposals for critical papers on any topic concerning Woolf studies. Papers will be presented at its ninth consecutive panel at the University of Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, which will take place Feb. 18 to 20. Read more.
The Review of English Studies offers essay prize
Posted 6 August 2009The editors of The Review of English Studies invite contributions on any topic of English literature or the English language from medieval times to the twentieth century for its 2009 essay competition.
The RES Essay Prize aims to encourage scholarship amongst postgraduate research students in Britain and abroad. The closing date for submissions is Sept. 30, 2009. Read more.
Call for papers about Bloomsbury art
Posted 5 August 2009The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will host a one-day symposium on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010, to explore topics related to the exhibition A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections, which will be on display at the Evanston, Ill. museum from Jan. 15 to March 14.
The museum invites proposals for presentations on such topics as Bloomsbury art production, criticism, display, and collecting; the Omega Workshops; design of books, fashion, gardens, architecture, domestic spaces, ceramics, furniture; ekphrastic writing and other aspects of visual culture related to the Bloomsbury group or its influences. Read more.
Virginia Woolf Miscellany seeks submissions
Posted 28 July 2009The Virginia Woolf Miscellany seeks short essays (2,000 words maximum) investigating Virginia Woolf’s interactions with periodicals. Particularly welcome are essays that read periodicals themselves as complex cultural texts while contextualizing and/or historicizing Woolf’s contributions. Essays that shed new light on Woolf’s evolving attitudes towards journalism and the print marketplace are also welcome. Submit essays by Aug. 31 via e-mail attachment to Patrick Collier at pccollier@bsu.edu.
Woolf Studies Annual Submission Guidelines
Posted 2 July 2009Woolf Studies Annual now accepts submissions at woolfstudiesannual@gmail.com. Below are new submission guidelines as published in Volume 15 of the publication, which came out this year.
Woolf Studies Annual, edited by Mark Hussey, invites articles on the work and life of Virginia Woolf and her milieu. The annual intends to represent the breadth and eclecticism of critical approaches to Woolf, and particularly welcomes new perspectives and contexts of inquiry. Articles discussing relations between Woolf and other writers and artists are also welcome.
Articles are sent for review anonymously to a member of the editorial board and at least one other reader. Manuscripts should not be under consideration elsewhere or have been previously published. It is strongly advised that those submitting work to the publication be familiar with the journal’s content.
Among criteria on which evaluation of submissions depends are whether an article demonstrates familiarity with scholarship already published in the field, whether the article is written clearly and effectively, and whether it makes a genuine contribution to Woolf studies.
Submission Guidelines:
- Articles are typically between 25 and 30 pages, and do not exceed 8000 words. Inquiries about significantly shorter or longer submissions should be sent to the Editor at woolfstudiesannual@gmail.com.
- A separate page should include the article’s title, author’s name, address, phone, and email address. The author’s name and any other identifying references should not appear on the manuscript to preserve anonymity for our readers.
- All submissions must include an abstract of no more than 250 words.
- Manuscripts should conform to the most recent MLA style.
- Submissions may be sent either by email to woolfstudiesannual@gmail.com or by mail to Mark Hussey, English Dept., Pace University, One Pace Plaza, New York NY 10038. For email submissions ONE hardcopy must also be mailed; for mailed submissions, please send three copies of the article and abstract.
- Authors of accepted manuscripts are responsible for any necessary permissions fees and for securing any necessary permissions.
All editorial inquiries should be addressed to woolfstudiesannual@gmail.com.
Inquiries concerning orders, advertising, reviews, etc. should be addressed to PaceUP@pace.edu.
Call for Papers: Communal Modernisms, 41st Anniversary Convention
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-11, 2010 – Montreal, Quebec- Hilton Bonaventure
This panel will explore the relationship between modernist aesthetics, ethics, and politics in the production of modernist media concerned with the idea(l) of community. Papers might consider how reading and teaching communal modernism(s) can serve as a counter to the predominant idea that the early 20th century valued, and therefore we should value, art as a means of individual self-expression over art as a way of envisioning more inclusive and interconnected communities.
Please e-mail (as Word attachments) a 250-word abstract and a short c.v. to Dr. Emily M. Hinnov at: ehinnov@bgsu.edu.
Deadline: September 30, 2009. Please include with your abstract: Name and affiliation, e-mail address, mailing address, telephone, and AV requirements ($10 fee applies). Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2010 Convention will be posted in June at http://www.nemla.org.
Read Oxford Journal English archive free online
The complete English archive is now online. To celebrate the new online version of the English archive, the journal is offering 25 free article highlights from throughout the journal’s 73-year history. The selection includes articles from the inaugural issue in 1936, right up to the current volume. Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/1 to view the list of article highlights and access them free online.
The selection includes:
- Aristotle on Detective Fiction, by Dorothy L. Sayers, Volume 1, Number 1, 1936 http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/2
- Poetry and Science, by Hugh MacDiarmid, Volume 16, Number 96, Autumn 1967 http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/3
- Teaching and ‘Theory’ Again, by Simon Dentith, Volume 44, Number 178, Spring 1995 http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/4
The Oxford Journals Archive: A current subscription to English includes access to all articles dating back to 1996. The English archive prior to 1996 is available to purchase as part of the Oxford Journals Archive. Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/5 for further details. Read free issue online: Download the sample issue from 2008 at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3629/6.
Cinematic Strategies in 20th-Century Narratives seeks essay contributions
Contributions are being sought for a proposed volume of essays titled Cinematic Strategies in 20th-Century Narratives. Virginia Woolf is one of the many authors whose work the volume will examine in terms of its cinematic elements. Abstracts of 500 words should be sent as Word attachments, together with a brief bio-bibliographical note, by July 15 to Dr. Teresa Prudente and Dr Federico Sabatini, Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Turin, Via San Ottavio, 10123, Turin, Italy. E-mail: teresa.prudente@unito.it ; federico.sabatini@yahoo.com. Completed essays of no more than 6,000 words must be submitted before Oct. 30. Publication will take place in early 2010. Get more details.
News about Woolfians
- Jane Wood, Ph.D., has been appointed interim dean of Park University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, effective July 1. Wood previously served the University as an associate professor of English and department chair. Read more.
- Senior English majors Lyndsey Morris and Laura Reyome were part of a Woolf and the City panel discussion, “Exhibiting Virginia Woolf’s Urban Affiliations: An Undergraduate Research Project at Alfred University,” along with Dr. Robert Reginio, assistant professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y. Read more about their presentation.
- “The Artist/Intellectual as Politician,” a critical essay written by Virginia Brackett, Ph.D., associate professor of English and director of the Honors Program at Park University, has been published in Woolf Editing/Editing Woolf: Selected Papers from the Eighteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. The essay examines a lack of self-confidence and resulting artistic insecurity on Woolf’s part that caused her to produce failed projects, such as her biography of post-Impressionist artist and fellow Bloomsbury member Roger Fry. However, writing without an editor and unfettered by public input or opinion, she regained her successful approach to produce a “new biography” in her private correspondence.
- Natania Rosenfeld, author of Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, has been awarded a four-week residency fellowship in Wyoming this summer. Read more.
- Wilmington native Mary Ann Caws has been elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of Virginia Woolf (Ilustrated Lives), Penguin, 2001; Overlook, 2002 and Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa, and Carrington, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990. Read more about Caws.
- Carol Long, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Willamette University, will assume the position of Geneseo’s provost on July 1. Her variety of teaching areas include modernist literature of Britain and America and specific studies on Virginia Woolf. Read more.
Get news about Woolf books on the Book page
Take a look at Blogging Woolf’s new Book Page, where news about old and new books about Virginia Woolf and her circle are posted and regularly updated. Books from Cecil Woolf Publishers, including the Bloomsbury Heritage Series and the War Poets Series, are listed.
Submit Woolf news, events, or links for Blogging Woolf
If you have one or all of the above, please send them via e-mail.
This page has the following sub pages.
Paula Maggio
Megan
Alice Lowe
Readers might be interested to know that as an independent bookseller specialising ONLY in Woolf and The Bloomsbury Group, and having spent over 20 years of (largely unacknowledged) commerce between myself and readers, book trade and a good many Institutions, that I – practically ignored by all but my faithful customers and never afforded an acknowledgement of my existence (this, despite helping financially to establish the VWSGB in 1998) – have now sold all of my stock in trade – numbering 3,500-4,000 books on or about Woolf or Bloomsbury – to a multi-millionaire patron of the arts and respected author. My “normal service” is to be renewed in the coming month with a 60-page A4 catalogue of new acquisitions – including two books hand-bound by Woolf for Quentin Bell and several dustwrappered books unseen by the “Bibliographers” along with completely un-noted editions of her work. Doubtless many collectors will be interested, so please e-mail me at woolfbooks@hotmail.co.uk and grab a catalogue. It costs a £ 5 note or $ 10 note but refundable against any purchase. Prices from £ 5 to £ 60,000.
Yours, from the darkest backwaters of Lancing, Sussex (actually Cokeham, Sompting, Lancing..).
Paul Evans (01903) 764655