Woolf, Historiography, and the Scene of the Modern

Professor Heidi Stalla

For the most part, the personal essay belongs in creative writing workshops, not in university courses that teach students how to write in academic disciplines.  This essay describes an experiential learning process that encourages personal expression across creative forms as a way of navigating, analysing, and responding to complicated texts in a literature classroom.  The essay uses as example an upper level course Professor Stalla teaches in a liberal arts common curriculum called Virginia Woolf and Historiography that sets out both to ask students to query the line between history writing and fiction in Woolf’s work, and also to think for themselves about the role the creative process plays in serious literary, social, and historical conversations, both inside and outside the academy.  The experiments in creative criticism are designed to help students develop sharp and analytical critical skills that they can apply to other aspects of their academic, professional, and personal lives.

Some examples of the work produced by students are: