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Orlando Extended Trailer
Orlando Extended Trailer
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Orlando Extended Trailer
This is Orlando, a podcast about the history of women's writing from medieval times to the present.
A major theme of this podcast is the material conditions that have enabled women’s writing throughout history and the situatedness of writers, readers, critics. In this introductory piece, Karen Bourrier and Kathryn Holland, two Canadian academics who met as graduate students in the UK, discuss what enables our own writing lives based on the criteria that Virginia Woolf set out in A Room of One’s Own almost a hundred years ago.
True to Woolf’s argument, we find that a study (preferably with a lock on the door) is necessary, and that good conversation, preferably over a good meal, and a walk can all help facilitate critical thinking and writing. Shifting our focus from 1920s prose to this remarkable historical moment, we consider how the pandemic has made working conditions more difficult for women in particular, and we discuss how lack of childcare and moving from the office to the dining room table have challenged our writing lives in the past year and a half.
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Transcription
Music (00:00): [intro music] Karen Bourrier (00:10): I'm Karen Bourrier. I teach 19th-century literature at the University of Calgary, located on Treaty Seven territory in Alberta, Canada. Kathryn Holland (00:18): And I'm Kathryn Holland. I teach modernist literature and gender studies at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, on Treaty Six territory, also in Alberta, Canada. Karen Bourrier (00:29): We are the co-hosts of a new podcast called Orlando that will take listeners on a jaunt through the history of women's writing. We'll talk to experts from around the world about what it was like to be a writer and a medieval nun in the 12th century; a woman who was blind in the 19th century; a novelist at the heart of 1920s queer culture; or British Nigerian playwright in the 21st century. Kathryn Holland (00:53): Questions we'll be asking include: what is women's writing, and why does it matter? How do we define it in our own time and in explorations of other historical moments? Kathryn Holland (01:07): One of the best known studies of gender, literature, and power is Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own", published in 1929. In it, Woolf explores what it takes to make it as a woman writer, highlighting the necessity of money and privacy that are represented by an annual income of 500 pounds and a lock on the door of the title space, a room of one's own. Karen Bourrier (01:30): Google the title of the book, and you will receive roughly 273 million search results -- more than Hamlet, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, and The Great Gatsby combined. Clearly, the book's concepts resonate in our imaginations, but how specifically do they remain relevant in the 21st century? And how can we use them as a springboard to delve into more expansive understandings of women's writing and the world that it inhabits? Kathryn Holland (01:55): These questions are among those at the center of this podcast. It is named after two forerunners. First, Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's 1928 novel about the historical contingencies of gender and creativity. And second, after the online textbase -- launched in 2006 -- that has followed in Woolf's steps as its own experiment in feminist literary history, Orlando: A History of Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Karen Bourrier (02:25): Both of these texts, print and digital, offer incisive and vivid narratives about writing by women and its conditions of possibility. Our podcast aims to extend this conversation. Karen Bourrier (02:51): Great. Uh, so this is Orlando: A Podcast, and I'm really excited to be working on it with you, Kathryn. Um, we can't use -- sorry! Kathryn Holland (03:00): [laughing]. Karen Bourrier (03:00): Let's start again. Karen Bourrier (03:20): So Kathryn, this has been a pretty unusual year for writing, because we're just coming -- hopefully -- kind of out of the pandemic. Um, and I want to ask you as a writer, uh, as an academic writer, like what has helped you this year, or have you been able to write, and what are the conditions that have enabled your writing? Do you have a room of your own or, or not so much? Kathryn Holland (03:43): I am extremely lucky to have, um, a space of my own, a room, in fact, with a lock on the door. Um, and what I have found during the pandemic is that the, my world has gotten in some ways smaller and slower. Um, I've shifted on to teaching entirely online, the work that I do, um, my, my research project has shifted entirely online. Um, my children are, um, in daycare, I have, I don't have a commute. I don't have browsing time outside of the home. And so in a way that has opened up opportunities to think about work differently, and also to think about reading for pleasure and writing for pleasure and, and having conversations for pleasure. And so in some ways this, the slowness and the smallness of the time has inspired me to organize my own time differently. Karen Bourrier (04:41): Oh, that's really good. I feel like for the first part of the pandemic, I couldn't read at all because as I was saying to you, I got a concussion. So I don't know if I'd experienced it in the same way, but we have just moved and I have for the first time an office as well, it's actually the guest room and the office? But we're not having any guests until the pandemic eases up. So that helps. Um, but I find, I don't share space with my husband, all that - well, we share the house okay...? Uh, but I'm very messy and he is not. So it's very nice. I have a desk now. For the whole pandemic before we moved - and I would not recommend moving in a pandemic - uh, we were switching off, uh, after I recovered from my concussion, and one of us got the home office and one of us got the kitchen table kind of thing? Uh, but then you have to clean the kitchen table at the end of the day, rather than leaving all of your books out. So it's very nice to have a desk of my own. Uh, even if eventually, we hope to welcome back company and I will be kicked out of the desk of my own. Kathryn Holland (05:43): And one thing about this time and your concussion is that it opened up an opportunity to listen. Karen Bourrier (05:50): Yes, I, I, you know, I'm a big reader, uh, and we - yeah, you consume media differently. I couldn't look at a screen or read for three months, which for an English professor is terrible. Uh, but yeah, it does open your mind to different forms of media consumption, and different modes of scholarly communication. For sure. Yeah. What else do you think has enabled your writing over the years? And has it changed since you had children? Kathryn Holland (06:19): I think that my, my time is -- my boundaries are a bit stricter since I became a parent. Um, and so I have, I have certain professional responsibilities that need to be done within a certain timeframe. And so there, I -- so I find that I'm a bit, I'm a bit more focused when I need to be, because I need to be. Um, but I also find that over the years, um, what has most enabled my writing life and maybe my thinking life that includes writing, is community. Community of different kinds. Um, and that includes, um, kind of my, my origin story, um, as, uh, an academic, um, which begins in the Orlando Project when I, um, I joined it as a research student at the beginning of my Master's program, um, and the - its emphasis on collaboration, on interdisciplinary collaboration, um, within a dedicated physical space that was building, um, a particular online project, really, um, inspired me to think about, um, the importance of talking and thinking and working together. Karen Bourrier (07:31): Yeah! I think that's really good because I think even the title, A Room of One's Own, tends to emphasize writing as a solitary kind of activity, but really, like if we have strong writing communities and people who are checking in on us, we're way more likely to make progress. Right? Kathryn Holland (07:47): I think it's definitely a balance. I mean, I love having, I love having a door to shut. I love having quiet. I don't like having -- I sometimes have white noise on, in the background when I'm reading or writing, but other than that, I don't like, you know, sneezes or wrestling or anything like that. Karen Bourrier (08:04): Oh. I read somewhere that a coffee shop is the ideal writing atmosphere, because there's just enough kind of, like - Kathryn Holland (08:09): Ambient noise. Karen Bourrier (08:12): Ambient - I mean, not that we've been able to work in a coffee shop for the last, and I'm not a big coffee shop worker, although I am a big coffee drinker, but yeah. Kathryn Holland (08:20): Yeah. I've heard of some, some sites that have different levels of ambient noise. Different kinds of coffee shops. I will take what I can get. Karen Bourrier (08:29): Like if you really want to control the amount of ambient noise while you write. Kathryn Holland (08:33): Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Sounds of the Bodleian has - sounds of the Bodleian has different, um, reading rooms that - whose recordings you can hear. And there's, um, the upper reading room has, um, recordings of papers rustling, and you can hear a Xerox machine at certain points and someone coughing? I think it's on like a several minute loop. Karen Bourrier (08:53): That is really funny. Um, I never wrote in the Bod - so the Bodleian is the Oxford library. And, uh, I, I didn't, I read in it, uh, the year that I was there, but I did not try to write in it. I think I do write in the room of my own with silence. Kathryn Holland (09:09): Yes. Karen Bourrier (09:09): And the door closed. Kathryn Holland (09:11): Yes. There's something, there's certainly something to be said for that. Karen Bourrier (09:15): What about food? This is a really funny - but what has always stuck with - I know this is bizarre - but what has always stuck with me about A Room of One's Own is those descriptions that Virginia Woolf has, of like the meal in the women's college that's a terrible meal, it's like pot roast and it's dry and there's no wine with the dinner, uh, versus the meal in the posh men's college, where I think she talks about like the lamp at the base of your spine, that lights up when you have like the delicious wine and the wonderful dinner - Kathryn Holland (09:45): absolutely! New Speaker (09:47): - she describes in great detail. Do you think that those kinds of consumption affect your writing life or no? Am I way off base? Kathryn Holland (09:54): Uh, that passage that you are referencing reminds me of the conversation that we had, um, during the Volume, the Orlando Volume Symposium about a year ago. It was just before COVID. It was in at the end of January 2020. Um, and someone mentioned it, um, at the last dinner we had. For me -- Karen Bourrier (10:10): It was probably me. Kathryn Holland (10:11): It was probably you. It's a great passage. It's a great passage. I'm, I'm the kind of eater who can enjoy very simple dishes, repetitively. Um, what I appreciate is, um, time away from the kitchen and not having to prepare the meal, especially not having to clean up the meal. And a little bit of it - I think you and I maybe are different in that I'm not a - I'm not a messy worker ... Or - <laugh> Karen Bourrier (10:39): <laugh> You can't see my desk right now. You'd be horrified. Kathryn Holland (10:42): It's fine. It's fine. Um, but I, but messes bother me. And so I really value time when I don't have to think about them or don't have to attend to them. So for me, when it comes to food, the question of preparation and cleanup is, that's the most important one or the one that I appreciate most. How about you? Karen Bourrier (11:01): Yeah, so you see it more as like encroaching on your writing. I think Virginia Woolf is talking, it's a very class-based structure, right? Cause she's talking about being waited on by college servants, and how good the food is or not. Not, you know, like there's no cleanup for her and that, and maybe it goes back to that conviviality that you were talking about? Like having these conversations with people, and then you've had this nice dinner the night before, and you're like all ready to write the next morning with these new ideas that are percolating. Kathryn Holland (11:27): Yeah. And I think that idea of percolation or percolating is really crucial for me. I need - and I'm, I imagine that many writers, um, are like this too - that time away from the notebook or the desktop, um, is so important. Um, I also like, I really like walking. Even if I, you know, leave my office and I walk, I walk around campus or I walk around my neighborhood, which I've been doing more of, of course, over the last year. So, um, that time away, which includes conviviality is so inspiring. Karen Bourrier (11:54): Yeah. I really like walking as well. Um, yeah. It definitely, it keeps you going. Yeah. I think she does a lot of walking in that book. I don't know if she talks about it specifically, but she's always said she's walking and then being told not to walk on the grass. Kathryn Holland (12:10): Exactly. Don't walk on the grass. Um, and that reminds me actually of a book. I think it was published in 2016, Lauren Elkins, Flâneuse? Have you read that? Karen Bourrier (12:18): No! Kathryn Holland (12:19): It's a fabulous, um, kind of cultural history, um, interleaved with her own personal experiences of walking different cities. Um, and it includes London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. I believe those are the four central ones, but it's really very much about, um, different kinds of mobility and agency and the pleasures of both solitude and conviviality and community. Karen Bourrier (12:42): Yeah. Okay. So we need a, we need a balance. Like in a day you need like the room of your own to lock the door of in the morning, and write. Then you need a nice walk to have the ideas percolating, and then you need a really good meal at the -- I don't know if we get all of this in every day. Kathryn Holland (12:57): No. And we haven't even, we haven't even raised the issue of conversation. With whom are you talking? What are you talking about? Karen Bourrier (13:03): Yeah. Hopefully not about meal planning. Hopefully we're having the nice meal rather than -- Kathryn Holland (13:09): Exactly. I like -- Karen Bourrier (13:11): And then talking to fellows at the college rather than, um, I don't know. Or maybe, maybe -- Kathryn Holland (13:18): Maybe your podcast co-host! Karen Bourrier (13:22): Yeah, I guess that's the kind of like conversation we're referring to rather than kind of the more mundane day-to-day stuff you might get. Kathryn Holland (13:27): Absolutely. Karen Bourrier (13:28): Yeah. Um, so I also want to ask you, do you think, like what do you think of the continuing relevance of the concept of women's writing? Or not, right? Because it's been really like, it, it might be a worry, uh, that, that means one monolithic thing that's not taking into account race or ability or any of those kinds of intersectional identities enough. Like how useful do you think, are we implying a hegemony here or -- I hope we're not! I think we're not. Kathryn Holland (13:58): I think that, I think that's certainly something that, um, many -- that we and many people strive to avoid. Um, I also think that there is a strong, I sense, and this is perhaps just anecdotal, but I sense a strong, um, curiosity and even hunger to know more about, um, the relationship between works of the imagination and those who work to bring those imaginary places and narratives to life. Um, and we, I think about, um, you know, the popular media and conversations about, um, how we define women's writing and how we understand women's writing in the, in the current moment and in historical periods, um, in a variety of ways. Um, and I'm thinking specifically of the Reclaim Her Name campaign. Um, I think this was, um, uh, sponsored by Bailey's, who also sponsors the Women's Prize, which I'm going to, um, talk about -- Karen Bourrier (14:58): Like Bailey's the alcohol or a different Bailey's? Kathryn Holland (14:59): Bailey's the alcohol! Baliley's the alcohol. So I feel, um, it's my understanding that Bailey's recently sponsored, um, the publication of a new series, um, titled Reclaim Her Name. And it features, um, new additions of well-known -- I mean, reasonably well-known, some canonical, some lesser -- Karen Bourrier (15:17): Like when they don't want you to use George Elliot's name, they want you to read -- even if that was what she wanted to ...? Kathryn Holland (15:23): Exactly. And what was, what was wonderful about, um, the, the launch of that series was the really robust public conversation about why women writers of a variety of periods would choose to publish pseudonymously, um, that really sort of, um, illuminated the nuances of, um, identity and culture across time. Um, and I also think about the Women's Prize. Um, I believe it was the 2020 or 2021, um, uh, competition in which Tori Peters became the first trans woman to be shortlisted, or rather longlisted. Karen Bourrier (16:02): I wanted to ask you about that specifically, right? Cause we're in a moment of more trans awareness, uh, like there's a worry that just talking about women's writing might not be inclusive enough, might not be up to the moment. So do you think, that category still is or can encompass -- Kathryn Holland (16:19): I think, I think that it, I think that it must be flexible. I think it must encompass, um, changing understandings of what it means to be a woman and who can identify as a woman and how different understandings of how each of us move through life in relation to our gender identities. So I think that -- Karen Bourrier (16:40): But then it's like - yeah, but then the category of women's writing still seems to be useful because there are like day to day conditions that are different for women across the globe. But also, I don't know, sometimes similar, right? Like women in the 19th century faced certain educational barriers, or if you were a medieval woman, you didn't write at all. And we're still unfortunately living deep in the patriarchy. Kathryn Holland (17:04): Yes. And how do you know, how do social conditions for women - perhaps around employment - affect, um, one's ability or one's time to write and the size of the room or the existence. Karen Bourrier (17:16): Well this has completely come up in the pandemic, right? Sorry, I'm talking right over you. But I mean, I definitely know more than one woman who has quit her job in the pandemic to take on childcare. Kathryn Holland (17:21): Absolutely. Absolutely. Karen Bourrier (17:22): So, and that's been, yeah. Which seems to suggest that the category of women and women's writing is still really like, if things are falling along those gender lines, it's still really important for us to think about. Kathryn Holland (17:33): Absolutely. Karen Bourrier (17:33): Because it hopefully doesn't need to be that way. Kathryn Holland (17:36): Yep! Karen Bourrier (17:36): Yeah. Kathryn Holland (17:36): Yeah! Jessica Khuu (17:51): This series is edited and produced by Jessica Jane Khuu, with the help of Christie Hurrell, and co-hosted by Karen Bourrier and Kathryn Holland. Additional resources and information on our amazing guests and contributors will be listed in the description. Please take care, and we'll see you next time.
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Orlando: A Podcast on Women's Writing
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Orlando: A Podcast on Women's Writing
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Bourrier, Karen
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Holland, Kathryn
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Bourrier, Karen
(show host),
Holland, Kathryn
(show host),
Hurrell, Christie
(producer),
Khuu, Jessica J.
(producer),
Khuu, Jessica J.
(audio engineer)
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" Orlando Extended Trailer", 2021, ( CU110655703) by Bourrier, Karen,Holland, Kathryn. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
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Orlando Podcast Extended Trailer
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