Mid-Pandemic Pedagogy: A Candid Dialogue between Student and Literature Professor

Abstract

In this article, an English professor and a sophomore-level English major explicate the singular difficulties of teaching and learning Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway mid-pandemic. These difficulties arise despite the fact that Mrs Dalloway would seem an ideal novel for our historical moment in the US. Woolf offers her readers searing insights into pandemic casualties, trauma, ruinous disillusionment with political systems, and radical isolation in a fragmented society. Working together, professor and student identify potent reasons why teaching and learning from this novel can be so difficult. We unpack a serious yet widely misunderstood gap between students’ and educators’ perspectives: a gap widened since 2020 by a combination of remote learning and social media consumption. We then recommend intellectual and pedagogical strategies that illuminate Woolf in ways not required before the pandemic, while also bridging perceptual gaps in the classroom between professors and students. Studying and interpreting Mrs Dalloway, a novel invested in illuminating myriad perspectives on PTSD, pandemic casualties, and political ruination, is difficult yet uniquely vital in this historical moment—though not for the reasons this professor expected.