Workshops
Anne Fernald, Fordham University
Thrilling Difficulty: Virginia Woolf, Students, and the Joys and Challenges of Difficult Texts
Those of us who read, write, and teach know the thrill of unlocking a difficult text. Recent neurological findings suggest that this thrill is a physical one: if every thought lights up a neuron, thoughts that move in two directions—puns, metaphors, riddles, and allusions—light up two. It seems we may literally get twice the electric charge out of “getting” a pun as we do from a regular thought.
This workshop focuses on strategies for bringing those pleasures to our students. Virginia Woolf’s writings will be both our case study and our example. Using fragments from notebooks, diaries, letters, essays, and novels, we will piece together her reading and writing process, discussing it as a potential model for student writers. Then, we will look closely at examples in which Woolf reworked texts from her precursors—directly or indirectly. Analyzing these resonant pairs gives us an opportunity to experience, in miniature, that thrilling difficulty. Finally, we will discuss how we might bring such strategies into our classrooms, whatever the discipline.
Beth Rigel Daugherty, Otterbein College
Jane Lilienfeld, Lincoln University
Moira Casey, Miami University–Middletown
“Talking Together: A Roundtable Discussion about Teaching Virginia Woolf”
We are three faculty members and one student, all with an interest in our general topic, teaching and learning Woolf in non-highbrow situations. The roundtable will consist of three rounds of remarks on contexts, challenges, and classroom practices by Beth Rigel Daugherty, Jane Lilienfeld, Moira Casey, and concluding comments by Jeremy Bradley, a student at Lincoln University. An audience discussion focused on contexts, challenges, and classroom practices will follow, moderated by Beth Rigel Daugherty.