Virginia Woolf, Europe, and Peace Vol. 1 Transnational Circulations

Virginia Woolf, Europe, and Peace: Transnational Circulations enlarges our understanding of Virginia Woolf’s pacifist ideology and aesthetic response to the World Wars by re-examining her writings and cultural contexts transnationally and comparatively through the complex interplay between modernism, politics, and aesthetics. The “transnational” paradigm that undergirds this collection revolves around the idea of transnational cultural communities of writers, artists, and musicians worldwide who were intellectually involved in the war effort through the forging of pacifist cultural networks that arose as a form of resistance to war, militarism, and the rise of fascism. The book also offers philosophical approaches to notions of transnational pacifism, anti-war ethics, and decolonization, examining how Woolf’s prose undermines center/edge or self/other bifurcations. Breathing new life into Woolf’s anti-war writings through a transnational lens and presenting us with the voices and perspectives of a range of significant scholars and critics, the chapters in this volume engage with mobile and circulatory pacifisms, calling attention to the intersections of modernist inquiries across the arts (art, music, literature, and performance) and transnational critical spaces (Asia, Europe, and the Americas) to show how the convergence of different cultural and linguistic horizons can significantly expand and enrich our understanding of Woolf’s modernist legacy.

Ariane Mildenberg is Senior Lecturer in Modernism in the School of English, University of Kent. She is the author of Modernism and Phenomenology: Literature, Philosophy, Art (Palgrave, 2017), the editor of Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2018), and the editor (with Carole Bourne-Taylor) of Phenomenology, Modernism and Beyond (Peter Lang, 2010). Her current book project investigates the dialogues between and postcritical aspects of modernist and postcolonial literature, focusing on how selected writers dismantle the hierarchies and binaries within language itself as a counteraction to imperialist and colonial discourse.

Patricia Novillo-Corvalán is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. ​Her research is located at the intersections between modernist studies and Latin American literature and culture. She has published original articles in leading journals such as Woolf Studies Annual, Modernist Cultures, Comparative Literature, and the Modern Language Review. She has authored two books: Borges and Joyce: An Infinite Conversation (Routledge, 2011) and Modernism and Latin America: Transnational Networks of Literary Exchange (Routledge, 2018) and is the editor of the volume, Latin American and Iberian Perspectives on Literature and Medicine (Routledge, 2015).