Virginia Woolf, Colette, and the significance of the non human

Objectif

This class brings together two influential women writers of the early 20th century. It is addressed at students from the English and French departments.

Virginia Woolf and Colette were regarded by women as significant beacons in the almost exclusively male context of art and public life at their time. This class is going to interrogate how gender was or was not central in their writings by focusing on how some of their works engage with the displacement not just of men but of humanity.

Woolf and Colette were similarly curious about the non-human dimension of life: how to articulate it in writing and how to provide a critical perspective on, precisely, human allegdly central significance.

Students are expected to develop an original critical argument on the basis of a presentation in class, to be further tranformed into either an essay (3000 words) or an exam.

Contenu

General presentation by the teacher of the texts and critical perspectives in weeks 1 to 3.

Exposés by students and class discussions monitored by the teacher.

Topics considered (for instance):

• Questions of perspective: testing an animal point of view
• Can animals have voices?
• Undermining the legitimate discourse
• How are the animal and feminist perspectives connected?
• Imagining different human ways of relating to the world
• Representing the artist with her animal
• Different ways of experiencing time
• Animals, humanity, and war
• Specific comparisons between Woolf and Colette
• Etc

The class is bilingial, open to students from the English and French departments, everybody speaking and writing the langiage of their discipline.