Blog Post #1

My expectations for this course are to familiarize myself with the writings of Virginia Woolf. I have never (to my knowledge or that I can remember) read any of her novels or short stories, so I am excited to see what is in store for me this semester. After reading over the schedule, it seems that science and nature were the two most discussed and written about topics in the 2010 Virginia Woolf Conference. Gender was another popular topic, although not so much as the two mentioned previously. The trends seemed to be following nature’s role in Woolf’s short stories, especially concerning The Waves. This was the one work of Woolf’s that I saw being the most frequently included in papers, and therefore seemed to be the work in which the Woolf scholars were interested most followed by Mrs. Dalloway. The subject that was most intriguing to me was that of Victoriana in Mrs. Dalloway. I am very interested in the subject of literature and the Victorian Era, so this appealed to me the most out of the other subjects presented at the conference. The paper title in which I was most interested was “The Nature of the Sexes: Androgyny and Communication in Woolf’s Kew Gardens”, written by KT Engdahl. This is the paper which I most wish I could have read or would like to read on the chance that it may be published in the future.