32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf

June 8 – 11, 2023

Florida Gulf Coast University

Fort Myers, FL, USA

Ecology (noun): ecol·​o·​gy |  \ i-ˈkä-lə-jēn. 

plural ecologies 

1a: The branch of biology that deals with the relationships between living organisms and their environment. Also: the relationships themselves, esp. those of a specified organism. 

1c: In extended use: the interrelationship between any system and its environment; the product of this. 

– Oxford English Dictionary, “ecology n.”

The organizers of the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf invite paper and panel proposals that engage with our 2023 theme, “Virginia Woolf and Ecologies.” We seek to foster conversations about a wide range of ecologically relevant topics. Proposals may address ecological concerns in or illuminated by Woolf’s work, but they might alternately explore artistic, social, political, economic, racial, decolonial, anti-ableist, and/or queer ecologies, among others, in or alongside Woolf’s novels, essays, letters, or diaries.

How might Woolf’s writing invite us to think ecologically? How might her political, ethical, and aesthetic engagements open ways of perceiving, imagining, creating, and acting that radically revise the assumptions of anthropocentrism—among them, the separate, superior, and intrinsic value of the human? What implications might ecological thinking have for archival, decolonial, queer, and crip projects or inquiries shaped by postcolonial studies, digital humanities, or medical humanities? What are Woolfian ecologies? How might Woolfian ecologies help us map, explore, define, or disrupt concepts of time, place, and scale?  How does “ecology” help us think through circuits of exchange, consumption, and capital in Woolf’s writings?  Where might we position Woolf or her writings within larger constellations of literary and/or modernist studies? How might a consideration of Woolf and Ecologies together encourage us, as Woolf writes in The Years, “to live differently—differently”? 

Proposals might address the following topics:

• the Anthropocene and anthropocentrism, climate change and the environment, biodiversity and sustainability
• writing and writing cultures, literary history and allusion, genre and form, intertextuality
• philosophical or theoretical resonance(s), including non-human, animal and food studies, environmental and energy humanities, and others
• cosmopolitan and transnational literary networks
• economic and political structures
• embodiment, mutation, formation and transformation
• autopoiesis or symbiopoiesis
• embeddedness, community, relation and interrelation
• temporality, extinction, scarcity
• technologies, landscapes, soundscapes, inscapes
• affect and sensation, perception, psychogeography
• naturecultures and culturenatures
• ecofeminism, war and peace, institutions, and more.      

Papers on members of the Bloomsbury Group and other associates of Virginia Woolf in relation to the conference theme are also encouraged. In addition to traditional paper and panel proposals,we also welcome proposals for roundtables, workshops, and creative projects inspired by this year’s theme from scholars, students, artists, and common readers of all backgrounds and disciplines.  

The conference welcomes proposals for presentations in languages other than English to foster a more open exchange at thi s international conference. We ask, however, that all abstracts and proposals be submitted in English and that non-English presentations be accompanied by a handout or slide deck of main points in English. Please note that Q&A sessions will be conducted in English, as well. 

Abstracts of 250 words maximum for single papers and 500 words for panels, roundtables, and workshops will be due on January 25, 2023. The submission portal is available on the conference website:  https://www.fgcu.edu/cas/departments/langlit/virginiawoolf2023. 

As in previous years, presenters will have the opportunity to submit their work for publication in the selected papers. Send queries to Laci Mattison at vwoolf2023@fgcu.edu.