This course will approach Virginia Woolf as the radical and iconic figure of modernist and contemporary writing that she is: a writer who challenges and often exceeds our expectations of the novel form and the possibilities of prose writing. The course offers space and time to explore many different Woolfs. Students will have the opportunity to make a detailed, intense and careful chronological study of Woolf’s major works. We will read her novels alongside her short stories, selected essays and extracts from her letters and diaries. During the course we will focus on the range of questions her work generates in the visual arts, feminism, and philosophy. Students will be encouraged to develop close readings of her writings and to consider her ideas in relation to the historical and political contexts in which she wrote. We will consider her importance to the histories of modernism and the avant-garde. Students will be encouraged to develop their own readings of Woolf alongside a growing familiarity with a carefully selected body of critical writing.