Topics for Presentations on Location

Each student gives one report about one of the scheduled events on the trip, to be presented at the location or just before.  The goal of these presentations is to share with classmates background information that will illuminate our understanding of the place visited and our readings of the relevant Woolf texts.  Plan your presentation to take about 20 minutes, plus discussion.  You must choose a topic from the topics list below, one topic per person.

Before the trip, prepare handouts to be distributed on site.  The topics list includes examples of useful handouts for each topic.

1. Bloomsbury Group - who was in it, who they were, why they were significant, what people thought about it, something about the London neighborhood from which the circle took its name.  Suggested handouts:  list of names of Bloomsbury participants with a brief biosketch; map of Bloomsbury with Woolfian locations marked; quotations from Woolf’s writing on the topic of Bloomsbury (see, e.g., “Old Bloomsbury” in Moments of Being)

2. Mrs. Dalloway’s London – the novel Mrs. Dalloway describes various characters London walks in such detail that you could retrace their steps.  We will follow one of those walks.  Report on how Woolf uses London streets and places in the novel, why she emphasizes these so much (much more than she does details of setting in Orlando or even To the Lighthouse).

3. Knole and Vita Sackville-West – background on the house, how it relates to the setting of Orlando, biographical information on Vita Sackville-West, who grew up there and is the original of Orlando.
   Suggested handouts:  quotations from Orlando describing the house; quotations from descriptions of Knole; historical background on Sackville-Wests and Knole, biosketch of Vita.

4. Talland House, St. Ives, and the Stephen family-- background on the house, how it relates to the setting of To the Lighthouse, biographical information about Woolf’s parents.
    Suggested handouts:  Woolf quotations about the house (see “A Sketch of the Past” from Moments of Being); quotations from To the Lighthouse and about her parents.

5. Monk’s House and Leonard Woolf-- background on the house and its present contents, what Woolf wrote while living there, her relationship to her husband Leonard Woolf (they were married nearly 30 years, and he continued to live at Monk’s House till his death in 1969).

Suggested handouts:  biosketch of Leonard Woolf; summary of Monk’s House Papers (now archived at a library, donated by Leonard Woolf)

6. Charleston and Vanessa Bell -- background on the house and especially the art work there; its relevance to Woolf’s work; biographical information about Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, especially her art work and her relationship to Woolf. 

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