Feed Your Head: Book Salon & Dinner on "Mrs. Dalloway"Feed Your HeadIn-Person
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2025
5:00-7:30 p.m.
Columbia University is one of the world's most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty, staff, and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.
In 1925, Virginia Woolf forever changed the landscape of modern literature with Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that unfolds over a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares for a party. With its stream-of-consciousness prose and profound meditation on time, memory, and identity, Woolf’s masterpiece captures the complexity of human connection and the silent struggles beneath the surface of ordinary lives. Decades later, this revolutionary work became the heartbeat of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours, which reimagines Woolf’s narrative across three intertwined stories: Woolf herself as she writes Mrs. Dalloway, a 1940s housewife finding escape in its pages, and a modern-day Clarissa navigating her own momentous day. In this salon, Mr. Cunningham will explore Woolf’s innovative storytelling and how it inspired his own layered exploration of love, loss, and the search for meaning across time.
Early-bird sign-ups for Fellows through February 20.
Tickets available to all teachers on February 21.
Final deadline: February 28
Cost: $25 (a $60 value)
Early booking exclusively for Academy Fellows*
*You are a Fellow of the Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.
Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is an acclaimed American novelist, screenwriter, and educator, best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours, which was later adapted into an Academy Award–winning film. He studied English literature at Stanford University and earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa’s Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His books include A Home at the End of the World, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, A Wild Swan and Other Tales, and Day. In addition to his literary achievements, Cunningham is a professor of creative writing at Yale University.