[Vwoolf] Teaching Orlando

[SUSAN FRIEDMAN]

Kristin,

I am fascinated by how *Orlando* has come into, gone out of, and come back
into favor with students over the 5 decades I have been teaching Woolf. For
now, the interest is very much related to the exciting new developments in
feminist and trans theory on non-binary concepts of gender, the pressing
civil rights and safety issues related to trans people, and the new ways of
thinking about gender that trans issues generates. Margaret Homans has a
wonderful article on *Orlando* in the contexts of current trans debates.
Here's the citation:
Margaret Homans, "On reading Woolf's *Orlando* as Transgender Text."
In *Contemporary
Revolutions: Turning Back to the Future in 21st-Century Literature and Art*,
212-36, a book I edited for Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018. For some other
discussions of they many recyclings and adaptations of *Orlando* that I
like, see Pamela Caughie's "The Temporality of Modernist Life Writing in
the Era of Transexualism: Virginia Woolf *Orlando* and Elnar Wegener's *Man
into Woman*." *Modern Fictions Studies*59.3 (2013): 501-25; and Christine
Froula's "Orlando Lives: Virginia Woolf's *Orlando* in Global Adaptation
and Performance." In *Contemporary Woolf*, eds. Claire Davison-Pegon and
Anne-Marie Smith-DiBlasio. France: Presses Universitaires de la
Mediterranee, 2014, 233-37.
    I'm sure there are many more wonderful articles and book chapters
discussing *Orlando* in the context of current trans theory and history. I
have certainly found that Honors students are stimulated by reading some
criticism on Woolf and developing their own ideas in dialogue with scholars.
Susan Friedman

-- 
Susan Stanford Friedman
Hilldale Professor in the Humanities, Emerita
Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women's Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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