Department of English

"The poets succeed by simplifying: practically everything is left out.  I want to put practically everything in" (Virginia Woolf, 1928).  It often seems as though Virginia Woolf did put "practically everything" into her novels and essays.  In this course we'll read work from across her publishing career (such as The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, The Waves, and Between the Acts), as well as some fiction by her contemporaries, including Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce.  The breadth of Woolf's writing will give us an opportunity to explore a wide range of twenty-first-century critical perspectives:  feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial angles will be among those we draw on as we analyze Woolf's texts.  We will also read and view recent adaptations of her work, investigating what Woolf has come to signify in twenty-first-century culture.  Class requirements include lively class participation, informal response papers, an annotated bibliography, and a final research paper.