Emeritus College

Sparks, Elisa Kay

Associate Professor Emerita of English, Elisa Kay Sparks, retired in 2013.

Book Details: About halfway through my magnum opus, currently titled “About a Hundred Flowers” detailing botany, mythology, literary allusions of all references to 99 or so flowers in Virginia Woolf’s fiction, essays, and life writing.

Digital Publications: Writing my 77th out of 97 essays on flowers appearing in Virginia Woolf’s fiction; each essay details botany, horticultural history, mythology, literary allusions, and all references to a given flowers in Virginia Woolf’s fiction, essays, and life writing.  Essays from Almond Blossom to Rhododendrons are available on-line at https://woolfherbarium.blogspot.com

Published Writings: Review of new anthology, Bloomsbury Handbook, for Woolf Studies Annual. Review of Lisabeth Larsson, “Walking Woolf’s London,” also for Woolf Studies Annual. Revision of paper on “Apples and Poppies: Alive, Alive, Oh!” (conference paper for the 2018 Woolf conference on Woolf and Peace in Canterbury UK) for forthcoming collection on Woolf and Peace. My essay on roses in Virginia Woolf, “’In Fading Silks Compose’: Reading Woolf’s Rosary”  is being published in a Brazilian anthology on new approaches to Modernism. My essay about Woolf’s parodic critique of Aristotle’s Poetics “Mrs. Brown and the Trojan Cow: Deconstructing Aristotle in “An Unwritten Novel” is being published in a 2018 anthology on Woolf and Reading.

Latest Published Writings: (All available at https://clemson.academia.edu/ElisaKaySparks)

  • Just delivered: “Opening Flowers in a ‘Sketch of the Past’: A Phenomenological Blooming” presented at the 20th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.
  • “’Pansies! Rosemary! Violence! My Wedding Bouquet’: The Violence of Violets in Virginia Woolf.” Conversa com Virginia Woolf. Davi Pinho, Maria A. de Oliveria, and Nicea Nogueir, Organizadores. Colecao X. Rio de Janeiro., 2020.
  • “Thoughts on Flowering in an Air Raid: Apples and Poppies — Alive, Alive Oh!” Virginia Woolf, Europe, Peace, and War, Vol 2: Aesthetics and Theory. Ed. Peter Adkins and Derek Ryan, Clemson and Liverpool UP, 2020.
  • “Mrs. Brown and the Trojan Cow: Deconstructing Aristotle in ‘An Unwritten Novel’.” Virginia Woolf and the World of Books: The Centenary of the Hogarth Press, ed. Nicola Wilson and Claire Battershill. Clemson and Liverpool UP, 2018.
  • “’In fading silks compose’: Reading Woolf’s Rosary.” Literaturas de Lingua Inglesa: Leituras Interdisciplinaries, 2. Ed. Davi Pinho and Fernanda Medieros. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil: Letra Capital Editoria, 2017.

Exhibitions:  I had a woodcut/encaustic monopytpe in avprintmaking exhibition, an exchange between the Contemporary Printmaker’s Collective in Greenville, SC and a group in Taiwan.

Other Details: Moved into my new house in Seattle, just down the block from Alki Beach, two years ago this March where I have been happily gardening, constantly zooming with Woolf scholars and friends, and writing essay after essay on flowers in Virginia Woolf (well over 100,000 words so far).