The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax

Lottery entry opens January 9 and closes January 16. Regular registration opens January 15.
Dates: December 9, 2024
Meets: M from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM
 Location: Bozeman, MT - Museum of the Rockies
Cost:  $0.00

Sorry, the signup deadline has passed.

Date Day Time
12/09/2024Monday3 PM to 5 PM

Please note: This course program requires membership in a 2024-2025 OLLI at MSU Membership

Description

This presentation is about the iconic feminist writer Virginia Woolf and her hoax on the British Navy. In 1910, she dressed in blackface and boarded the HMS Dreadnought pretending to be an African prince. The talk intertwines three fascinating stories: a scandalous prank and its consequences, Woolf's ideas about race and empire, and the Black experience in Britain, from real princes to Caribbean writers and South African activists. Describing an extraordinary chain of events, the speaker will explore how and why this future revolutionary novelist joined in a bigoted blackface prank and suggest what it tells us about Woolf and her world.

Image by James Lafayette

Program Takeaways

  • An appreciation of the 1910 Dreadnought Hoax's historical context and its role in Virginia Woolf's thinking.
  • An understanding of the often-overlooked diversity of Virginia Woolf's world, particularly the place of people of African descent.
  • The problem of reconciling Woolf's enlightened ideas about women and war with her participation in this racist prank.
Fee:  $0.00

Bozeman, MT - Museum of the Rockies

600 West Kagy Blvd
Bozeman, Montana 59717

Danell Jones

Danell Jones is a writer and scholar with a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia University. She is the author of The Virginia Woolf Writers Workshop, the poetry collection Desert Elegy, and An African in Imperial London, which won the High Plains Book Award for Nonfiction. Her newest book is "The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and the Dreadnought Hoax.