<div dir="ltr">Hello all,<div><br></div><div>Madelyn's suggestion of an assignment along the lines of "On Being Quarantined" actually happened for me this last semester. I had a truly remarkable semester this spring teaching our Major Author's course on Woolf. It was an exceptional group of ten graduate students - literature MAs, several MFAs, and an art MFA. I've taught this seminar twice before in my career, each time thinking I'd been spoiled, but this cohort surprised me from day one in their readiness to engage deeply in a critical and creative dialogue with the many touch points of Woolf's work. I'd like to think that some of the syllabus choices I made in setting up the course and my sense that this might be a last song opportunity had something to do with how well things were going. However, I would be gravely remiss not to point to the excellent mix of students and a certain chemistry that happened when we all came together. Woolf was the strong invisible web threading our lives in the in between time and there was a real sense of eagerness to share and discover what the rest of us had in the interim of our meetings. </div><div><br></div><div>On March 12th we met to discuss "On Being Ill," marveling over the uncanniness of reading it in that moment. The next day the university closed. I was teaching an online Intro. to Lit course at the time as well, so teaching online wouldn't be an impossible transition for me, but the loss of our classroom presence for the Woolf group was heartbreaking both for them and for myself. In our next meeting, the following week on Zoom, we spent a half hour processing all that had happened and then planning the rest of our weeks. I presented them with a way we could complete the syllabus as planned using Zoom and other means, but then I also presented two other possible paths. The original syllabus was designed to lead us through two more major texts (Three Guineas and Between the Acts) along with work (group and individual) involving letters, diaries, and contemporary connections, all building blocks to final essays that might be helpful to them in a portfolio or possible publication opportunity. In coming to a consensus about the schedule, we came back to what had become the granite in all our myriad conversations had revealed itself as: the way that art served Woolf as a means to engage. The original syllabus/final essay design included a creative option for the final project, but this option had rarely been invoked in the past. It was clear to me and to them that they had a real hunger to continue on with Woolf - the reading felt important, vital, and therapeutic for its intense vision and complexity - but there was also a very real exhaustion that made research and orthodoxy seem impossible. In contrast, the desire to create, to make and respond, question and express, inspired by Woolf's work and her sensibility of perception was overwhelming. Thus the final project could be a formal research essay or it could be any form of substantive creative engagement with Woolf's work, including a reflective analysis. The week before these projects were due, students would also be submitting a Self Reflection that analyzed one of the ongoing projects they were doing - keeping a diary or correspondence during the course. It included three example entries/letters and a short introduction and reflection on the experience. For the other meetings of our final weeks we devised a Choose Your Own Woolf Adventure schedule. Everyone would participate in the discussions of Three Guineas; at these two Zoom meetings we discussed the work and then spent time on each student's evolving plans for their final project. Students then paired off into "rooms" according to the similarity or interest in their projects and spent the final fifteen minutes of class brainstorming and offering feedback. Two students both interested in quarantine blogs ended up partnering and produced a truly rich blog and instagram page. With their permission, I've copied links below. I had offered to drop Between the Acts given the stress and work all of them faced in the coming weeks and gave them the opportunity to email me a vote yes/no to decide. The vote was exactly split, and the resolution was simple - those who wanted to read would, and those who didn't have the mental bandwidth could be absolved. In our Zoom meeting we spent a half hour on projects, then the five who had gone on with Between the Acts stayed and the conversation went on. </div><div><br></div><div>Having spent the best of a decade researching the influenza pandemic and modernism and finally having moved on in the last years, it has been an odd time for me. It also felt like the cruelest fate to be torn away from such an exceptional opportunity with Woolf and that group of students. However, what is clear now is that the choices we made (and were guided by Woolf's philosophy) and the enforced interruption of our participation in the army of the upright worked only to intensify the experience. The best work I've ever read in my graduate courses came out of that class. The conversations started there are ones that have continued - stretching to Kentucky, California, and Ohio from Idaho well after the final week. Zoom, as banal as we all now find it, worked beautifully for us (and my own failing health), but I also realize that the magic number 10 had a great deal to do with that. The experience has taught me a great deal about how using creative work can be done with academic rigor and the highest degree of critical thought when done with frameworks that facilitate such productivity, and Woolf's work in all its variety and depth is exceptional precisely for that. </div><div><br></div><div>Of the projects produced, the variety was quite impressive. A screenplay of The Waves. A short story by my English student who offered a contemporary pastoral of his home village - the work has just been published. A word translation/art project. A creative nonfiction essay on motherhood and marriage. One pseudo-academic paper that uses a Woolfian assay rhetoric to interrogate genre boundaries. </div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div><br>Cheryl Hindrichs</div><div><br></div><div>From Katie Wright and Madison Jansen:</div><div><ol><li style="margin-left:15px"><a href="https://katiewright541.wixsite.com/onbeingquarantined" target="_blank">This is the main blog, "On Being Quarantined". The entries are divided between my own, Madi's, and our guest posts. You can clink on the filter tabs above the entries (Madison, Katie, Guests, etc.) to see specific posts. If you'd like our posts delivered in a Word doc format as well, just let me know. </a></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/a_mystic_quality/" target="_blank">We were also both posting writing/images on the connected Instagram, so here's that link as well. You can see the Instagram posts on the blog itself by clicking on any of the images in the line of pictures on the main page (scroll down and you should see it). </a></li></ol></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 6:52 AM Detloff, Madelyn via Vwoolf <<a href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.osu.edu" target="_blank">vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">HI all,<div>I hope you are all safe and healthy. I will miss seeing you at the conference. As we Chicago Cubs fans are fond of saying, "Wait until next year!" :)</div><div><br></div><div>I teach online but usually WGS courses, so I don't have specific modules set up for Woolf. That said, I think that an online course might be a good opportunity to do some interesting work on her letters, since they present a form of communication that presumes the need to connect across separateness. It might also be interesting to read "On Being Ill" together with a class this fall. I could imagine an assignment where students create their own updated takes on On Being Quarantined, or something similar. </div><div><br></div><div>Take care, all, and... I can't wait until next year! </div><div><br></div><div>Madelyn </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 6:47 PM Kllevenback via Vwoolf <<a href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.osu.edu" target="_blank">vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Has anyone exciting/interesting approaches to on-line teaching of VW and Bloomsbury?<br>
Stay safe, be well—<br>
Karen Levenback<br>
<br>
The Future of College Is Online, and It’s Cheaper<br>
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/online-college-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/online-college-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare</a><br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><p style="text-align:left;line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:rgb(204,0,0);font-family:Arial;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><br><br><div><p style="text-align:left;line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"></p><table style="border:none;border-collapse:collapse"><colgroup><col width="166"><col width="458"></colgroup><tbody><tr style="height:105.75pt"><td style="border-width:1pt;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(255,255,255);vertical-align:top;padding:5pt;overflow:hidden"><p style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><span style="border:none;display:inline-block;overflow:hidden;width:152px;height:108px"><a href="http://miamioh.edu/about-miami/recognition/index.html" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GyP_j-13qnJbUaiWacH5mP_nGZwredMQG-61WyC_V_xgsyUahFvs2iUuPwhCaOLdTqnagiFmT-HBVp86cA9cnJqOllpVQB9RpeRrNTAkNSqEn2WJzLkI9h64NnwsszDn2S4OtWtq" width="152" height="108" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></a></span></span></p></td><td style="border-width:1pt;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(255,255,255);vertical-align:top;padding:5pt;overflow:hidden"><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font color="#cc0000" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Madelyn Detloff</span></font></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:x-small;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-style:italic;white-space:pre-wrap">Chair and Professor of English </span></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:x-small;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-style:italic;white-space:pre-wrap">Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies </span></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font size="1"><span style="background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:700;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><span>Miami</span> University </span></font></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:x-small;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;white-space:pre-wrap">356 Bachelor Hall</span></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:x-small;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;white-space:pre-wrap">Oxford, OH 45056
</span><span style="font-size:x-small;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;white-space:pre-wrap">O: 513-529-5221 | MiamiOH.edu/English</span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent"><font color="#000000" face="Arial" size="1"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">WebEx Office: <a href="https://miamioh.webex.com/join/Madelyn.Detloff" target="_blank">https://miamioh.webex.com/join/Madelyn.Detloff</a></span></font><br></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br><div><div style="text-align:left"><font size="1">*</font><span style="font-size:x-small">I am agnostic about pronouns as long as they are respectful, but she, her, hers will do in a pi</span><span style="font-size:x-small">nch*</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Department of English<br>Boise State University<br>1910 University Drive<br>Boise, ID 83725-1525<br><br>office: (208) 426-7072<br>home: (208) 901-5500<br><a href="mailto:cherylhindrichs@boisestate.edu" target="_blank">cherylhindrichs@boisestate.edu</a><br></div></div></div>