Reading Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" as History, Autobiography and Biography

<strong>CENTRE FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES, JNU</strong> a Seminar on <strong>Reading Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" as History, Autobiography and Biography</strong> By <strong>Professor Susan Visvanathan</strong> Centre for Study of Social Systems, JNU DATE: <strong>31st March, 2015</strong> Susan Visvanathan reads Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" in terms of the concerns of colonialism and travel writing. She engages with the concept of the house, as essential to the functions of memory production. She interprets portraiture (whether through prose or photography,) working with the idea of the androgynous subject, to detail the manner in which VW critiques the colonial project. Using Biography, Autobiography and History, and the web of associations arising from the matrix of hierarchic social relations, "Orlando" becomes a text for sociological analyses.