Leslie Kathleen Hankins
Leslie Kathleen Hankins
Professor of English
Biographical Sketch
Leslie Kathleen Hankins, professor and Chair of the department of English and Creative Writing and past President of the International Virginia Woolf Society, completed her Graduate Certificate in the Book Arts and Technologies at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2019. She has published extensively on Woolf and enjoys bringing creative multi-tasking into courses on Wilderness and the Arts (at the Boundary Waters), journal-writing as a creative art, avant-garde films of the 1920s, women film directors, Hitchcock, transatlantic modernism, and introduction to the book arts. A founding member of Foxden Press, she initiated archival research projects on Winifred Mayne Van Etten, a beloved member of the English department who in 1936 won the coveted Atlantic Monthly novel prize for her Depression-era feminist pioneering novel, I am the Fox. Hankins launched her own press, Making Waves Press, through which she has published photography/poetry books. Current creative/research projects include work on Virginia Woolf and the cinema, including editions of works of Virginia Woolf with visual annotations, and a series of creative photography/poetry books celebrating water: Witness Waves: Holding Water, and Suminagashi of the Seasons of River and Lake. Another work-in-progress is her novel of speculative auto-biographical fiction, Trespassageways: The Portal Project.
Faculty-Student Research
SPONSOR, STUDENT RESEARCH AND PUBLISHING PROJECTS
Cornell Summer Institute 2016: Sydney Pratt, editor and designer, The Cheerful Idiot, short story by Winifred Mayne Van Etten, published by Foxden Press.
Cornell Summer Institute 2017: Emma Meyer, designer and editor of The Hat, a play and a short story by Winifred Mayne Van Etten, published by Foxden Press.
Cornell Summer Institute 2017: Maureen Sullivan, designer an editor of All That Should Accompany Old Age, a short story by Winifred Mayne Van Etten, published by Foxden Press.
Cornell Summer Institute 2017: Jessica Halter, designer and editor of Dissertation on Roast Pork, a short story by Winifred Mayne Van Etten, published by Foxden Press.
SPONSOR, STUDENT SYMPOSIUM PROJECTS
2019 Megan Hanson, “Stripped by the Male Gaze: Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Looking-Glass.’”
2018 Jessica Halter, Emma Meyer, Maureen Sullivan, “Republication of Winifred Mayne Van Etten.”
2017 Sydney Pratt, “Reviving Winifred Mayne Van Etten’s Works.”
ART EXHIBITION (Award winning Paper Arts Installation)
Towards the Learning Curve of Waves. Paper Trails Exhibition of Paper Arts, Morgan Conservancy. Cleveland, 2018. Won Award of Excellence.
Publications
SpellBindings: Fantasies & Meditations on the Enchantments of Books. Making Waves Press, 2020
The Shell Ascending: Fantastical Choreography, Making Waves Press, 2020
Empty to the Brim: fantastical flights of seasoned shells. Making Waves Press, 2019. Judith’s Room, Making Waves Press, 2018.
RECENT ACADEMIC ARTICLES
“Following Virginia Woolf’s Call for A Press of One’s Own: Making Waves Press Launches Judith’s Room: Virginia Woolf and the World of Books: The Centenary of the Hogarth Press: Selected Papers of the 27th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference, ed. Nicola Wilson and Claire Battershill: Clemson University Press, 2018: 189-194.
"Heritage Hoarding: Artifacts, Archives & Ambiguity, or, the Saga of Virginia Woolf's Standing Desk." Virginia Woolf and Heritage: Selected Papers from the 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, 2018:
“Picture This: Virginia Woolf in the British Good Housekeeping!? or Moving Picture This: Woolf’s London Essays and the Cinema.” Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries: Selected Papers of the 25th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference. Edited by Julia Vandivere. Clemson University Digital Press, 2016: