PhD student Rosie Reynolds has organised a symposium at the University of Westminster to celebrate the publication of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day.
Night and Day, published in October 1919, follows the daily and romantic lives of two acquaintances, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet, dealing with issues such as women’s suffrage, and the coexistence of love and marriage.
The symposium is comprised of three panels of academics who will discuss various aspects of the novel. The keynote paper titled ‘Night and Day is Dead - Long Live Night and Day: Spaces of Memorialisation and the Burden of Literary Geography’ will be presented by Dr Suzana Zink from Université de Neuchâtel.
The first panel is titled ‘Women Questions: feminist readings of Night and Day’ with panellists including Dr Rebecca Welshman, an Independent Researcher, Dr Stanislava Dikova from the University of Essex, Dr Nicola Pierre Boileu from Aix-Marseille University and Jenni Råback from Queen Mary University London.
The second panel titled ‘Night and Day in conversation: reading Night and Day alongside other texts’ is made up of Dr Helen Glew from the University of Westminster, Ellie Mitchell from the University of Cambridge, Jessica Gray from the University of Kent and Dagmara Kottke from KUL University Poland.
The third panel is titled ‘Making it new: innovation, controversy and modernity in Night and Day’ and includes Dr Annalisa Volpone from Perugia University, Dr Annika Lindskog from Linköping University, Mariachiara Leteo from the University of Oxford and Dr Sue Reid from the University of Northampton.
Reynolds said about the event: “It is a privilege to welcome leading Woolf scholars to the University for this celebration of Night and Day.
“It is particularly fitting to be holding the event in the heart of London, whose foggy streets the characters of Night and Day haunt, one hundred years to the week since the novel’s publication.”
The symposium will be held on 26 October at the University’s Regent Street Campus.
