[Vwoolf] Please Submit Today--Dreadnought Hoax Reflections

Mon May 17 13:28:53 EDT 2021

Danelle,

Here is my reflection:

I have long wondered about the Dreadnaught hoax: Did the officers on the boat go along with what they knew to be a gag? If so, why?  If they didn’t know this was a hoax—if it wasn’t obvious that these were white people disguised as people of color, what does that say about how the British saw or didn’t see “otherness?” This leads me to think about alterity, and about how different worldviews were in the pre-World War I (and II) era. One parallel that comes to mind is  an old filmed Peter Pan, in which Peter is played by a woman (I think, Mary Martin). I remember a friend saying she had seen it as a child and had no idea Peter was female, because the gender cues were so different in her day, but her young children immediately knew Peter was a “girl” and so were thrown out of the story. 

This Dreadnaught Hoax seems to me centrally important as it speaks to how we perceive reality and “the other,” a concern of Woolf’s, of course, but also a concern for all of us going forward. 

> On May 17, 2021, at 8:47 AM, Diane Reynolds via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Danell,
> 
> I am very interested in your Dreadnought Hoax discussion which I plan to attend—I wrote to you earlier about it—but got caught up over the weekend. I don’t know if there isstill  time for a brief reflection, but would be glad to provide one if there is. My interest in it revolves around whether or not the ship’s officers saw through the disguise and went along with the hoax, and if they didn’t, what that says about how people “saw” race. 
> 
> I am very interested in the alterity of the interwar world—this happened a few years before the period but seems of a piece with the early 20th century being such a different period—more so than I think we often acknowledge. 
> 
> It sounds like a fascinating discussion. The question of how we respond to Woolf’s use of blackface is a fascinating one.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Diane
> 
> 
> 
>> On May 15, 2021, at 9:45 AM, Danell Jones via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>> I’m hoping that anyone interested in submitting a brief reflection about the Dreadnought hoax will be able to get it in to me today. (If you can’t, could you let me know that you will  be sending something?) I would like to send out a packet of the reflections to those attending by Sunday or Monday. 
>>  
>> I’ve gotten some wonderful reflections so far and would love to hear yours. 
>>  
>> Danell
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> To lay a foundation for the “Rethinking the Dreadnought Hoax: A Discussion ” at the VW Conference, I would like to invite anyone who wants to participate to share a short (250-500 word) reflection on the hoax in advance of the conference. Please send it to me, Danell Jones, at danell at danelljones.com <mailto:danell at danelljones.com> by  May 15th.
>>  
>> Before we meet in June, I will email a packet of the reflections to all participants.
>>  
>> The goal of the conversation is to think about the ways we understand the hoax, teach it, use it in art, biography or performances. Here are some critical questions we might ponder:
>> In the past, the Dreadnought hoax has been considered subversive, pacifist, feminist, anti-imperialist, even anti-racist. Are those understandings still valid?
>> 
>> How do we contend with Woolf’s use of blackface? 
>> 
>> What does the hoax mean to scholars, students, common readers, artists, writers, and performers today? For example, what do student reactions reveal? How do performances like Kabe Wilson’s “The Dreadlock Hoax” invite us to rethink Woolf’s act and what it means?
>> 
>> How do we teach, talk about, or otherwise engage the Dreadnought hoax in the era of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements?
>> If there are any questions, please feel free to contact me: danell at danelljones.com <mailto:danell at danelljones.com>
>>  
>> Very Short Bibliography
>>  
>> There are many articles, book, podcasts, etc. that talk about the Dreadnought Hoax. Here are just a handful to get started. 
>>  
>> deCourcy, Elisa. “The Dreadnought Hoax portrait as an affront to the Edwardian age.” Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 405–24. 
>> 
>> Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook. “Bushmen and Blackface: Bloomsbury and ‘Race.’” The South Carolina Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2006, pp. 46–64, 279.
>>  
>> - - -. “Virginia Woolf, Performing Race.” The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, Edited by Maggie Humm, Edinburgh UP, 2010, pp. 74–87.
>>  
>> (Gerzina’s research on the history/experience of Black folk in Britain is extensive.)
>>  
>> Johnston, Georgia. “Virginia Woolf ’s Talk on the Dreadnought Hoax.” Woolf Studies
>> Annual, vol. 15, 2009, 9–45.
>> 
>> Jones, Danell. “The Dreadnought Hoax and the Theatres of War.” Literature & History, vol. 22, no. 1, 2013, pp. 80–94.
>>  
>> Jean E. Kennard, “Power and Sexual Ambiguity: The Dreadnought Hoax, The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, and Orlando.” Journal of Modern Literature, 20: 2 (Winter 1996), 149-164. 
>>  
>> Stansky, Peter. “The Dreadnought Hoax.” On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World, 1996, Harvard UP, pp. 17–46.
>>  
>> Wilson, Kabe. “The Dreadlock Hoax.”Studies in the Maternal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2014. DOI: 10.16995/sim.15 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.15__;!!KGKeukY!lOMj-upfZI_UsHyu0YSsx-9i-ZAqjyietMAReMNC31pbDccomm3u9M_g-Eq_B3FOsRRqTNeHp3pqH28$>.
>>  
>> Young, Kevin. “The Time Virginia Woolf Wore Blackface.” The New Yorker, 27 Oct 2017. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-time-virginia-woolf-wore-blackface__;!!KGKeukY!kOkzUtysbgKtAQEc3Ka2qAfVsPiLU1-VJpaoZC247yyu6fUSIvuy5Ub8k25x5ffkgxMEBym5pt8wdzU$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Fwww.newyorker.com*2Fbooks*2Fpage-turner*2Fthe-time-virginia-woolf-wore-blackface&data=04*7C01*7CBenjamin.Hagen*40usd.edu*7C90f7705c7d44469dec0908d8eaeb38f2*7C9c36a7d0bf7b49919b78be91a52f0226*7C0*7C0*7C637517643286670733*7CUnknown*7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0*3D*7C1000&sdata=Mv*2FN4mwrDFu*2B9jqlyX1rVg1KkVsWI1NOsj*2B1IbsaI7s*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJQ!!KGKeukY!lOMj-upfZI_UsHyu0YSsx-9i-ZAqjyietMAReMNC31pbDccomm3u9M_g-Eq_B3FOsRRqTNeH1X8oDTk$>.
>>  
>> Woolf, Virginia. “The Dreadnought Hoax Talk.” The Platform of Time: Memoirs of
>> Family and Friends, edited with an introduction by S. P. Rosenbaum, Hesperus, 2008.
>>  
>>  
>> Sent from Mail <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986__;!!KGKeukY!lOMj-upfZI_UsHyu0YSsx-9i-ZAqjyietMAReMNC31pbDccomm3u9M_g-Eq_B3FOsRRqTNeHQn1JRbI$> for Windows 10
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
>> Vwoolf mailing list
>> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
>> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf <https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf>
> _______________________________________________
> Vwoolf mailing list
> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20210517/a95acd89/attachment-0001.html>