All Program Dates

• January 20, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• January 27, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• February 3, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• February 10, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

Registration

• Tuition for this course is $220. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.

• Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.

• This program is for those 18 and older.

• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Friday, November 14, for Rosenbach members on Friday, November 21, and for the general public on Wednesday, November 26.

Description

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf unfolds over one day in 1923, focusing on the experiences of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class woman throwing a party, and Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War. Through an innovative depiction of their thoughts and impressions, Woolf gives us a protean, expansive view of London in the interwar years and creates two of the most complex and vivid characters in English literature. The result is simultaneously a landmark work of Modernism, a groundbreaking study of trauma, a comedy of manners, and a bracing reverie on loss and memory. In this course, we'll explore this stylistic and psychological masterpiece. Each session will include some relevant background, but our discussions will be guided by the interests of our participants. Likely topics will include gender, history, cities, war, time, trauma, power, sexuality, and family.  

Instructor

Sean Hughes is a Philly-based writer and editor who has taught at Bryn Mawr College and Rutgers University–New Brunswick, where he completed a PhD in English Literature in 2020. His research interests include 19th-century literature, the relationship between literature and philosophy, historicism, and poetics. He has previously taught courses on George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Virginia Woolf, and the sonnet for the Rosenbach.