Our project brings together French and American scholars of Virginia Woolf to explore the resonance of her work across the boundaries of language, history, medium, and nation. We join the current surge of critical interest in what are often called "sound studies" and that Woolf called the "waves in the mind” that reverberate below the frequencies of semantic specificity. In addition to deepening our understanding of Woolf's "auditory imagination" (a phrase we borrow from her friend T.S. Eliot), we seek to gain a better understanding of the formal and philosophical porosity of sound and the intimate connections between avant-garde radiophonic experimentation and modernist aesthetics.
UC PI:
Elizabeth Abel
Department of English, UC Berkeley
France PI:
Claire Davison
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3