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| Vol. 18, No. 33 | May 27, 1999 |
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| Vol. 18, No. 33 | May 27, 1999 |
An international gathering of scholars is planned at the University from June 10-13, as UD plays host to the ninth annual Virginia Woolf Conference "Virginia Woolf Turning the Centuries."
Organized by local Woolf scholars, Bonnie Kime Scott, English, and Ann Ardis, English and UD Honors Program, the conference will feature a public presentation by Ntozake Shange, author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, and a keynote address by Julia Briggs, professor of English literature at DeMontfort University in England.
A public presentation by Shange, playwright, poet and performer, is scheduled from noon-1 p.m., Sunday, June 13, in Room 120, Smith Hall. She will present a program that incorporates her own works and her literary influences, including Woolf. She also will address the conference theme of the turning of the centuries.
The presentation is free to students and $5 for the general public. Tickets may be purchased at the door.
Shange, who has been called "America's most lyrical black voice," first gained national attention for her Broadway hit, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
Shange also is the author of Three Pieces, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Award and has penned six books of poetry. Her novels include Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo, Betsy Brown and Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter, which established her as a major African-American woman novelist.
Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, N.J., she later took the Zulu names Ntozake, which means "she who has her own things" and Shange, which means "she who walks with lions."
In her keynote address, Briggs will speak on "Finding New Virginias" at 8:30 p.m., Friday, June 11, in the Bacchus Theatre of the Perkins Student Center. The talk will focus on her forthcoming biography of Woolf, which pays particular attention to the way allusion functions in Woolf's writing, the development of her literary thought and the significance of the books that Woolf began but did not complete.
Briggs is the author of Editing Woolf for the Nineties and Virginia Woolf: Introductions to the Major Works.
Other sessions planned for the conference include three discussions of feminist studies-"Feminist Resistance," "Conversations at the Turn of the Century" and "Turning the Century with Feminist Criticism;" three sessions on period studies-"Revisiting the Long 18th Century," "Woolf and the Victorians" and "Modernism and Modernity;" four sessions on disciplinary traversals-in science and technology, religion and philosophy, physics and art; three sessions each on the cultures of war, Woolf's continuing influences, subjectivity and forms of history.
Other talks range from discussions of Mrs. Dalloway, same sex desire and homosexual coding, reading Woolf and Joyce together, Woolf on trauma and wellness, the ethics of suicide, Woolf's short stories, the impact of her husband, Leonard Woolf, and much more.
Throughout the conference, an exhibition of library materials relating to Woolf, also called, "Virginia Woolf Turning the Centuries" is on display in the Morris Library. The exhibition will remain on display until Sept. 7.
For more information on the conference, the library exhibit or the talk by Shange, call 831-2363. 
-Beth Thomas
