UQ hosts Virginia Woolf symposium

Virginia Woolf’s influence on the past 100 years of literary and visual culture will be discussed at a symposium that opens at The University of Queensland (UQ) today.

The symposium, ‘Virginia Woolf and the Nature of the Human’, will be held over two days (10-11 December) and is hosted by the School of English, Media Studies and Art History.

The event celebrates the influence of Virginia Woolf and her circle on the past 100 years of literary and visual culture, asks questions about the relationship between human character and modernity, and explores the role of the Humanities at UQ in the 21st century.

Coordinator of the symposium, Dr Hilary Emmett, said that even at its most experimental, Woolf’s work shows us that literary representation engages both social and historical realities.

“It is therefore the ideal starting point for a discussion of the role of the humanities in a modern university, and in public life,” Dr Emmett said.

“The celebrations of a century of the humanities at UQ will include an exhibition of self-portraits, a series of public lectures on Woolf and her legacy, and a dramatic performance of her experimental novel, The Waves.”

Professor Gillian Whitlock (UQ), Professor Melba Cuddy-Keane (University of Toronto Scarborough) and Dr Lorraine Sim (University of Ballarat) will deliver keynote addresses. This will be followed by panel sessions on Australian Modernisms, and the future of the humanities

The event is being hosted in conjunction with the UQ Centenary, UQ Art Museum, the Cultural History project in the Faculty of Arts, and supported by the Brisbane Writers Festival and Avid Reader bookshop.

Media: Mr Damitha Maddugoda, 07 3365 9163.