McVicker, alumna Stenson to present scholarly work at Woolf conference

Department of English Professor Jeanette McVicker will have an essay published in the academic journal Woolf Studies Annual this summer and will also give a paper at the annual conference on Virginia Woolf, sponsored by Lamar University and held virtually June 9-12.

The article, “Archaeological Woolf: Prehistory, Heterotopias, and Envisioning the Future,” will appear in Vol. 28 of WSA in June 2022. The journal is published by Pace UP. Dr. McVicker’s conference presentation, “Woolfian Ethics and Heterotopias,” grows out of the research she did for the essay, which links the idea of “heterotopias” or “other spaces” with the work of mourning, and social transformation.

McVicker explores Woolf's uses of her personal and the ancestral historical past to theorize more equitable spaces for society's “others,” drawing on contemporary feminist and gender theory.

Alumna Emilee Stenson, who graduated in 2021 with a degree in Molecular Genetics and a minor in English, will also make her second presentation at the annual Woolf conference. Entering medical school this fall, Ms. Stenson’s paper will explore bioethics within a Woolfian framework, addressing “Grants and a Lab of Her Own: A Woolfian Approach to Gender Disparities in Medical Research Funding."

Stenson did extensive work on Virginia Woolf with McVicker as part of her Honors thesis and course work for her English minor, and is committed to pursuing a social justice approach to her future work as a physician.