“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” 

English novelist Virginia Woolf blazed through the first half of the 20th century, opening every door of the mind to ask why. Her novels explore and interrogate gender, social class, religion, war, education, family structure, capitalism, and other beliefs and practices that we take for granted. As a stylist, Woolf was also a great prose poet, writing some of the most memorable sentences in the English language and forging new narrative techniques with each of her novels. Her pathbreaking work made her a "literary foremother" for many writers coming afterwards as well as a founder of modern feminism.

In this course we will read Woolf's major novels (Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, and Between the Acts), a selection of her short fiction and nonfiction (A Room of One's Own, Three Guineas, memoir, and literary criticism), and learn about her life and times, drawing from her fascinating letters and diaries. Coursework includes papers, collaborations, tests, and a final project. This course satisfies the DI requirement for the College of Arts & Sciences or the diversity requirement for the English major (under the old requirements for the English major, it also fulfills the Author (B) or Genre (C) categories in Breadth of Study, and within Depth of Study it counts for 20th century literature (D) and gender and sexuality (L).)

Woolf's writing offers a lifetime's nourishment for the mind; it's never too early or late to start the feast.