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Literature in Focus: Virginia Woolf (2025/2026: Semester 2 – Summer)
Course aim
After completing the course, students are able to
1. Articulate typicalities of a number of Woolf’s texts;
2. Apply theoretical notions concerning intertextuality;
3. Formulate in class discussions, presentations and written assignments interpretive insights about literary texts that structurally, stylistically or thematically resonate with one another;
4. Give a presentation about a text, literary or otherwise, outlining the text’s characteristics and ways in which it resonates with Woolf’s work;
5. Produce independently intertextual analyses involving Woolf’s texts studied in the course.
Relation learning goals to assessments
participation - goals 1,2,3
presentation - goals 1,2,3,4
paper - goals 1,2,3,5
essay plan - goals 1,2,3,5
final paper - goals 1,2,3,5
1. Articulate typicalities of a number of Woolf’s texts;
2. Apply theoretical notions concerning intertextuality;
3. Formulate in class discussions, presentations and written assignments interpretive insights about literary texts that structurally, stylistically or thematically resonate with one another;
4. Give a presentation about a text, literary or otherwise, outlining the text’s characteristics and ways in which it resonates with Woolf’s work;
5. Produce independently intertextual analyses involving Woolf’s texts studied in the course.
Relation learning goals to assessments
participation - goals 1,2,3
presentation - goals 1,2,3,4
paper - goals 1,2,3,5
essay plan - goals 1,2,3,5
final paper - goals 1,2,3,5
Course content
The course offers a thematic case study, that changes every year. This offers students the chance to get acquainted with classical and canonical works more in depth, learning how to do close reading as well as placing the text in its historical context. Students also explore different forms of critical receptions and evaluation through time, disciplinary contexts and scholarly traditions.
Summer 2026 topic: Virginia Woolf
The publication of The Hours (1998)--Michael Cunningham’s homage to Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925)--and the beginning of fourth-wave feminism in 2012 have sparked a renewed and new interest in the work of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the most important literary writers of the 20th century.
Searching for ways to reflect life--which is, as Woolf puts it in her essay “Modern Fiction” (1925), “not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged,” but “a luminous halo”--she has developed an innovative narrative poetics geared towards representing ways in which sensory perceptions, feelings, and thoughts play out in human consciousness. Her work furthermore exposes numerous social and political conventions that stifle individual development and hinder societal progress. Intimate, precise, and questioning, her writing draws upon a myriad of traditions--literary and otherwise--and, in turn, has inspired a rich diversity of creative and theoretical voices.
In this course we study Woolfian tapestries of texts by exploring a selection of Woolf’s essays, short stories, life writing and novels together with literary, (post-)modernist, critical, (auto)biographical, philosophical, psychoanalytical, political and sociological intertexts. We read, for example, Orlando: A Biography (1928) together with A Note of Explanation (1922) by Vita Sackville-West and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989); To the Lighthouse (1927) together with All the Lives We Ever Lived (2020) by Katharine Smyth; and “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) together with Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). In addition, our discussions are informed by theories of intertextuality as formulated by Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and others.
Format
Instructional formats include short lectures, class discussions, presentations, and a short and a long essay. With the exception of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), “A Room of One’s Own” and Orlando plus the shorter reading materials, all texts are studied in excerpted form.
Contact hours
Summer 2026 topic: Virginia Woolf
The publication of The Hours (1998)--Michael Cunningham’s homage to Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925)--and the beginning of fourth-wave feminism in 2012 have sparked a renewed and new interest in the work of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the most important literary writers of the 20th century.
Searching for ways to reflect life--which is, as Woolf puts it in her essay “Modern Fiction” (1925), “not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged,” but “a luminous halo”--she has developed an innovative narrative poetics geared towards representing ways in which sensory perceptions, feelings, and thoughts play out in human consciousness. Her work furthermore exposes numerous social and political conventions that stifle individual development and hinder societal progress. Intimate, precise, and questioning, her writing draws upon a myriad of traditions--literary and otherwise--and, in turn, has inspired a rich diversity of creative and theoretical voices.
In this course we study Woolfian tapestries of texts by exploring a selection of Woolf’s essays, short stories, life writing and novels together with literary, (post-)modernist, critical, (auto)biographical, philosophical, psychoanalytical, political and sociological intertexts. We read, for example, Orlando: A Biography (1928) together with A Note of Explanation (1922) by Vita Sackville-West and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989); To the Lighthouse (1927) together with All the Lives We Ever Lived (2020) by Katharine Smyth; and “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) together with Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). In addition, our discussions are informed by theories of intertextuality as formulated by Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and others.
Format
Instructional formats include short lectures, class discussions, presentations, and a short and a long essay. With the exception of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), “A Room of One’s Own” and Orlando plus the shorter reading materials, all texts are studied in excerpted form.
Contact hours
Tuesdays: 11AM - 3PM
Wednesdays: 11AM - 3PM
Fridays: 11AM - 3PM
Wednesdays: 11AM - 3PM
Fridays: 11AM - 3PM
Instructional formats
UCU HUM 2 course
Examination
participation
Required | Weight 10% | ECTS 0.75
short paper
Required | Weight 20% | ECTS 1.5
final paper
Required | Weight 40% | ECTS 3
Essay plan
Required | Weight 10% | ECTS 0.75
Presentation
Required | Weight 20% | ECTS 1.5
Entry requirements and preknowledge
Entry Requirements
No data about mandatory entry requirements is available.
Preknowledge
Any level 1 HUM course. Recommended courses: [UCHUMLIT11] Introduction to Literature or [UCHUMMES11] Intro to Comparative Media Studies.
Languages
- English
Competences
-
Academic writing
-
Interdisciplinarity
-
Critical reading
-
Research skills
-
Presenting
Course Iterations
Related studies
Exams
There is no timetable available of the exams
Required Materials
-
BOEKWoolf, Virginia. Orlando 1928. ISBN-13 978-0241436301. 10 euros
-
BOEKWoolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse. 1927. Wordsworth, 1994. ISBN-13: 978-1853260919; 4 euros
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BOEKWoolf, Virginia “A Room of One’s Own.” 1929. Vintage, 2018. ISBN-13: 978-1784874476; 5 euros
Recommended Materials
-
DIVERSESecondary articles about the primary and theoretical texts
Remarks
Topic of course changes every few years
Coördinator
| dr. S.P. van Bommel | S.P.vanBommel@uu.nl |
Lecturers
| dr. C. Aaftink | C.Aaftink@uu.nl |
Enrolment
Attention: this course is not open to students from other faculties, so subsidiary students can't enroll for this course.
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