Those of us who study Woolf tire of the popular fascination with her mental illness. This may be because we feel that her health is merely one facet of a complex person and artist—a single aspect that seems to eclipse everything else about her in the popular imagination. That Woolf was mentally ill and tookContinue reading “Sovay Muriel Hansen: Madness and Desire—Teaching Virginia Woolf alongside Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and Other Artists”
Category Archives: Art
Katie Kopajtic: Summoning Woolf
When people ask me what my play Modern Witches is about, I explain it like I explain my life when an unwitting person asks, “What do you do?” So I write, and act sometimes, I’m also a swim coach and improv teacher, video editor … So there’s this actor, and she’s a mess, so she’sContinue reading “Katie Kopajtic: Summoning Woolf”
Alex Clarke: Woolf as Expressionist? (Approaches to Emotional Expression)
Triangulating Lukács, Bloch, and Woolf As part of a Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies research project at Birkbeck University (London), I learned to situate Virginia Woolf’s works in relation to a thought-battle between German Expressionists and Realists. Specifically, the study looked at the fiery discussion between George Lukács and Ernst Bloch in Aesthetics and Politics.Continue reading “Alex Clarke: Woolf as Expressionist? (Approaches to Emotional Expression)”
James Kearns: Woolf Walks
“I don’t think I could ever grow tired of this country.” [1] Whenever we are there, we walk the circumference of these standing stones: The Merry Maidens. We do this each time because we know that Virginia Woolf would have done the same; we touch the top of each of them in turn before walkingContinue reading “James Kearns: Woolf Walks”
Catherine Paul, Hysteria 2: Deserters from the Army of the Upright
When I became chronically ill and left my job as an academic, I looked to writers and artists—and especially women—who had also dealt with significant illness. I was, frankly, shocked to find how frequent the experience of chronic and recurring illness was (and is) among writers and artists, and how rarely this common human experienceContinue reading “Catherine Paul, Hysteria 2: Deserters from the Army of the Upright”
Woolfian Sketches
“She was one of the invisible presences who after all play so important a part in every life.” So writes Virginia Woolf in “A Sketch of the Past” about her mother, Julia Stephen. I could say the same about Woolf herself, for I’ve been writing about her for over two decades in my academic work.Continue reading “Woolfian Sketches”
Kika Kyriakakou, I (from the collage series A Room of One’s Own, 2015)
A collage inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1929 groundbreaking essay on women’s rights and independence. The work juxtaposes text and typography from A Room of One’s Own with visual elements from videos, photographs and collages of other artists, pioneering in their field. The female body becomes deconstructed and analysed, whether it is a paper doll fromContinue reading “Kika Kyriakakou, I (from the collage series A Room of One’s Own, 2015)”
“On Being Ill”: A COVID-19 Diary
Artist Ane Thon Knutsen introduces her homage to Virginia Woolf´s “On Being Ill.” Using her letterpress, she printed one sentence a day from March 23rd to August 29th, shaping a diary in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about her work here. Since 2016, Virginia Woolf has had a tendency to guide me throughContinue reading ““On Being Ill”: A COVID-19 Diary”
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