This course is designed to acquaint students with both the range of Virginia Woolf's achievements and a range of contemporary critical perspectives. Here are some of the questions we will explore:
What are the connections between Woolf's formal experiments as a writer and her critique of the society in which she lived and wrote?
How (and why) has Woolf been transformed as a writer into a cultural icon and literary superstar?
What are the strengths and limitations of various critical approaches to Woolf's life and work? What do they help us to see more clearly? What do they obscure or exclude?
How might reading Woolf from different critical perspectives change our understanding of her work, of the art of reading, and of ourselves as readers?
What is an author? Should we care about the author's intention?
What is at stake when we interpret literature? What is literature, and what isn't? Who decides?
How do we judge the value of a literary work? Where do these value judgements come from? On what assumptions are they based?
In keeping with College policy, you are expected to attend all of our class sessions.
You are expected to prepare the readings assigned for each session (including any assigned critical materials) and to take an active role in class discussion.
An on-going journal is required for the course as well as periodic postings from your journal on the online discussion forum. (For details, click here.)
A special project is also required. (For details, click here.) Note deadlines on the class schedule for a detailed project proposal (October 26) and for the project's completion (December 7).
In lieu of a final examination, you will be giving a formal presentation to the class, based on your special project, during final exam week. For specifics, see "Presentations" below.
Approximate breakdown of final grade: 25% for contributions to class discussions, including responses to selected journal entries posted on the discussion forum; 40% for the journal; 20% for the special project; 15% for the final presentation.
Deadlines will be extended and absences excused only in the case of an urgent personal problem or a family emergency, verifiable by the Dean, or of a serious, documented illness. Absences from class will limit what you will gain from the course and what you can contribute to it. Unexcused absences also will lower your final grade for the course.
Late work for which no extension has been granted will be docked at the rate of one-half letter grade per day of lateness. All work must be submitted by the last day of class.
For your own protection, always make a copy of your work before submitting it.
Note:
Keeping a journal offers you a regular opportunity to think more deeply about
the readings and our discussions, to make connections, test out arguments, think
through topics for further discussion or for your special project, and plant
the seeds for future research. You may keep either an 'electronic' journal
on the "Student Pages" section of our class forum,
or a regular, written journal (which must be typed before it is submitted).
I will read the journals in their entirety at various times during the term.
I will let you know in advance when I will be reading the journals, so that
you can 'edit' them beforehand, if you wish. Here are the groundrules.
•Every week, select an entry from your journal and post it on the forum. Try to do this no later than Wednesday of each week, so that your classmates have time to read the posted entries and respond to them by the following Monday. You don't need to respond to every entry that is posted, but you should try to respond to a few each week. Look out for one another and try to make sure everyone's entries receive at least one response each week.
Write regularly. Date your entries. The number of pages you write is less important than the evidence your entries provide of serious, sustained inquiry and engagement in the course. Often, however, quantity and quality are intertwined. The more you write, the better you will get at producing entries that push your thinking forward.
Vary the kind of entries you write, but make sure that you keep your focus on the course, the readings, our discussions, and closely related topics. Sometimes the entries might be critical, sometimes creative, as long as you focus on something specific.
It is fine to start with your pre-critical, "gut" reactions to the readings; see if by reflecting upon them you can gain insights into yourself as a reader and critic and into how your assumptions affect your response to the works and issues at hand.
Ask questions. A good question opens up other questions that in turn will lead you to new insights. At times you might want to respond at some length to one or two of the questions that you raise here or that were raised in class. You don't have to come up with "definitive" answers. Think of yourself as trying to keep the discussion going, instead of trying to shut it down. ("Shutters shut." -- Gertrude Stein) It often helps to focus on trying to describe what you find especially 'odd', mysterious, or frustrating about a particular work, passage, character, or criticism.
Make connections. To do this, you may need to put your ideas in a larger or different context that allows you to explore their validity.
Explore some of the weblinks for the course, or other related websites of your own choosing. Use some of your journal entries to evaluate these sites. Click here to see how to go about evaluating a website.
We will talk in class about guidelines to follow in responding to someone else's posted journal entries.
Note:
Deadlines for a detailed project proposal and for the completed project are
listed on the "Class Schedule."
•Projects that consist primarily of work in other media (paintings, drawings, video clips, webpages, etc.) must also contain a substantial written component (minimum length: five typed pages).
•Projects should be critical/creative experiments of your own devising, drawing upon the readings or perspectives you found most interesting among those we studied or exploring others we did not have time to take up in class.
•The projects may develop out of reflections on your own journal entries about the readings and class discussions. They may focus on connections between works we are reading or may involve a more in-depth study of one particular approach to that work. They also may focus, for instance, on some aspect of Bloomsbury and its artists, on the film versions of Mrs. Dalloway or Orlando, on the correspondence of Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, or on different biographers' treatments of various aspects of Woolf's life. These are just suggestions and are not meant to limit your imaginations! We will discuss this assignment further in class.
Format: Prepare a 15-20 minute presentation in which you address the items described below (and others, if you wish). If possible, please address these items in the order that follows. This should help you to organize your remarks; it will definitely help us to follow them.
(1) State what you were trying to explore and why, how you went about it, and what problems you encountered, if any.
(2) Summarize your overall 'argument' and state clearly whatever discoveries or insights you gained through your work on your special project.
(3) Discuss what you would do differently, if anything, if you were to do this project again, what else you had hoped to do and did not have time for, and what new ideas for further possible research or experimentation occurred to you while working on this project.
Outlines for Presentations: E-mail an outline of your presentation (not of your project) to everyone else in the class (including the instructor) by 5 p.m. the day before the presentations are scheduled to take place. The point of this part of the assignment is to encourage you to give a well-organized presentation and to provide the rest of us with a sneak preview of sorts, so that we might be thinking of questions to ask you during the discussion session after your presentation.
Discussion sessions: Presentations will be followed by a brief discussion session. You will all be expected to have read one another's outlines beforehand and to have given some thought to possible questions you might raise during the discussion sessions.
Criteria for Evaluation: Presentations will be evaluated on the basis of organization; coherence; coverage of the items mentioned in (1), (2), and (3) above; your ability to observe time limits; and your ability to field questions raised in class about your work.
Some Pointers: PRACTICE your presentation. Time it carefully beforehand so that you know you can meet the time limits without rushing. If you're soft-spoken, you will need to make a conscious effort to speak up. Since most of us tend to talk very fast, it's a good idea to keep reminding yourself to slow down as you give your presentation. Feel free to refer to your notes occasionally, but don't stay glued to them. When you are talking about the problems or limitations that you see in your work at present, don't put yourself down. Evaluating one's own work is often difficult and requires skills that are well worth cultivating. It shouldn't be confused with self-deprecation, which is usually a defensive tactic, an unconscious habit, or both.
In the discussion period after your presentation, listen carefully to people's questions and responses and see if you can learn something from them. If the group has no substantive questions, bring up one of the questions that occurred to you when you were preparing your presentation, one that you thought your peers might ask and that you would like to talk about with them. Then, if they still fail to respond, that's their problem, not yours. You will have done your part and will have tried to help them to do theirs.
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Last update: 5 September 2000