Prof. Elizabeth Abel Talks Odd Affinities and Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts (website) got there first, nonetheless I’m thrilled to share the news that Prof. Elizabeth Abel released Odd Affinities : Virginia Woolf’s Shadow Genealogies with the University of Chicago Press this year.

cover of odd affinities with a black and white image of Virginia Woolf sitting, looking wistfully at the camera.
Abel’s Odd Affinities (2024).

Prof. Abel (faculty page) teaches with the UC Berkeley English Department. They teach courses on Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group as well as broader overviews of 19th and 20th century English literatures. This fall, they are leading courses “Memoir and Memory” as well as on graduate readings and special study.

In Odd Affinities, Prof. Abel discusses Woolf’s influence beyond a female tradition, looking at echoes of Woolf work in four major writers from diverse cultural contexts: Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, and W. G. Sebald. Looking at those “odd affinities,” Abel looks at how “Woolf’s career and the transnational modernist genealogy was constituted by her elusive and shifting presence.”

You can access Abel’s book through the UC Library Search, where you can access it online and download the fulltext.


Library Trial of Soviet Woman Digital Archive (25 October 2021 through 24 November 2021).

We have set up a thirty-day trial of the Soviet Woman Digital Archive (1945-1991)

To link to this database during the trial is below:

https://libproxy.berkeley.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fdlib.eastview.com%2Fbrowse%2Fpublication%2F99106

Published initially under the aegis of the Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee and the Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR, in the aftermath of WWII in 1945, the Soviet Woman magazine began as a bi-monthly illustrated magazine tasked with countering anti-Soviet propaganda.  The magazine introduced Western audiences to the lifestyle of Soviet women, their role in the post-WWII rebuilding of the Soviet economy, and praised their achievements in the arts and the sciences.

Additional Information:

The magazine covered issues dealing with economics, politics, life abroad, life in Soviet republics, women’s fashion, as well as broader issues in culture and the arts. One of its most popular features was the translations of Soviet literary works, making available in English, (and other languages) works of Russian and Soviet writers that were previously unavailable. An important communist propaganda outlet, the magazine continued its run until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Coverage:1945-1991

Vendor: East View

Producer:Правда