[Vwoolf] Informal survey on teaching Eminent Victorians

[Caroline Webb]

Dear Todd et al.,

I used to teach a double-credit course called "Victorian to Modern" that focused on the Bloomsbury Group and looked at how their work could be seen as responding, positively and negatively, to the work of their Victorian predecessors.  I included a section on biography quite late in the course and assigned Eminent Victorians, focusing on the lives of Cardinal Manning and Florence Nightingale, prior to Orlando.  In the course's later incarnations I included a short snippet of Nightingale's "Cassandra" a week or two earlier, when we were talking about attitudes to women, and also juxtaposed Strachey with Oscar Wilde's essays.

I loved teaching the course, which has disappeared with a curriculum revamp that removed all double-credit courses except one open-topic one that I hope to teach on this topic one day . . . Students responded reasonably well to EV, and were particularly interested in the portrait of Nightingale.

Regards,
Caroline
From: vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Pat Laurence
Sent: Sunday, 6 April 2014 4:46 PM
To: Avery, Todd; Unknown contact
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Informal survey on teaching Eminent Victorians

Dear Todd & Woolfians,
In a course on "Victorian Conversations," I've taught Strachey's Florence Nightingale in EV in conversation with a section of Gillian Gill 's Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale. It stimulates discussion of Strachey's debunking of Nightingale in the context of Victorian biography, as well as evolving views of accomplished women, Nightingale's extraordinary work in Crimea,  and biography now.
Best,
Pat Laurence

On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 7:43 PM, Avery, Todd <Todd_Avery at uml.edu<mailto:Todd_Avery at uml.edu>> wrote:
Friends,

I hope you all are well, that spring has sprung where you are (or that autumn is delightful a ways south of where I am, in New England) and I hope, too, that an inquiry about Lytton Strachey is appropriate for the list.  I'm really simply curious---this came up in a conversation with an editor---as to how widely and frequently Eminent Victorians is taught.  I'll look into this further, with publishers, but I thought I'd begin here, at the center of the canon, rather than "on the fringes" (the editor's phrase).

Many thanks for any information, however casual.

Best,

Todd

Dr. Todd Avery
Associate Professor of English
Coordinator, Online English B.A. Program
University of Massachusetts Lowell
O'Leary Library 481
61 Wilder Street
Lowell, MA 01854
978-934-4184<tel:978-934-4184>
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