elicia


Elicia A. Clements

Photo of Elicia A. Clements

Associate Professor

Office: Vanier College, 206
Phone: 416-736-5158
Email: elicia@yorku.ca

Attached CV

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Elicia Clements is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Humanities and English. She has published extensively on the interdisciplinary connections between the art forms of literature and music. Articles include musico-literary links between Virginia Woolf and the composer Ethel Smyth, Woolf's narrative methods and the late compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the performative interchange between the words and the music in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All. She is co-editor of a collection of essays with Lesley J. Higgins titled Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts published by Palgrave Macmillan (2010). With the assistance of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant she has published the monograph Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language (University of Toronto Press, 2019). A chapter on Woolf and Variation Form can be found in the Routledge Companion to Music and Modernism (2022), with forthcoming chapters on Walter Pater (for Boydell & Brewer) and Ethel Smyth (Cambridge Companion) to appear in 2025. Currently, she is working on a book project titled Literary Musics in the Early Twentieth Century with the aid of another SSHRC Insight Grant.

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Degrees

PhD in English Literature, York University
MA in English Literature, York University
BA (Honours) in English Literature, University of Western Ontario
BMus (Honours) in Music Education, University of Western Ontario

Professional Leadership

Chair, Department of Humanities, July 1, 2020 to June 2023.
Undergraduate Program Director for the Department of Humanities, July 1, 2018-June 30, 2020.

Research Interests

, Modernism, Interdisciplinary Studies, Intermedial Studies, Literature and Music, Performance Studies, Sound Studies, Socio-Historical Politics
  • SSHRC Standard Research Grant - 2007-2011
  • SSHRC Insight Grant - 2012-2018

Current Research Projects

Literary Musics in the Early Twentieth Century

    Summary:

    A SSHRC-funded monograph that examines the literary and musical exchange of ideas and techniques found in the works of James Weldon Johnson, Walter Pater, Langston Hughes, James Joyce, Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gertrude Stein. The project develops new understandings of trans-Atlantic “modernism” by exploring the socio-historical politics of musico-literary connections during the early twentieth century.

    See more
    Role: Principal Investigator

    Funders:
    SSHRC
The Politics of Intermedial Modernsim(s)

    Summary:

    A collection of essays that considers the political, social, and cultural ramifications of intermedial modernism, attempting to develop methods and provide examples of the in-between work that can disclose avenues of resistance sometimes unseen or unheard when working within one discipline or medium.

    See more
    Collaborator: Dr. Sarah Jensen
Socio-Historical Politics in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Opera

    Summary:

    This project explores literary and musical remediation in early-twentieth century operas composed by Ethel Smyth, William Grant Still, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Virgil Thomson, alongside contemporary American and Canadian composers Terence Blanchard, Ian Cusson, Dean Burry, and Sean Mayes.

    See more
    Role: Principal Investigator

Books

Publication
Year

Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language. The University of Toronto Press, 2019.

2019

Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010.

2010

Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Variation Form in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction and Nonfiction,” The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature. Eds. Rachael Durkin, Peter Dayan, Axel Englund, Katherina Clausius. London, May 2022. 272-281. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Music-and-Modern-Literature/Durkin/p/book/9780367237240

2022

"The Efficacy of Performance: Musical Events in The Years." Virginia Woolf and Music. Ed. Adriana Varga. Bloomington & Indiana: Indiana University Press, June 2014. 180-203.

2014

Introduction. With Lesley Higgins. Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010.

2010

"Pater's Musical Imagination: The Aural Architecture of 'The School of Giorgione' and Marius the Epicurean." Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010. 152-66.

2010

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

Rev. of Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form, by Emma Sutton, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Woolf Studies Annual. 20 (2014): 176-179.

2014

Rev. of Words and Notes in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Edited by Phyllis Weliver and Katharine Ellis. Boydell Press, 2013. Nineteenth Century Prose. 42.2 (Fall 2015): 434-439.

2013

Rev. of Brad Bucknell's Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce, and Stein. The Pater Newsletter. 46 (Spring 2003): 5-9.

2003

Rev. of Paula Gillett's Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." Victorian Review. 28.2 (2002): 96-99.

2002

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

"How to Remediate; or, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts." Modern Drama. Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 45-72.

2019

"Oscar Wilde's Music: A Critical Response to Walter Pater." The Pater Newsletter. 59/60 (Spring/Fall 2011): 4-16.

2011

''We Cannot Retrace Our Steps': Sonorous Performativity in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All.' Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies 59 (November 2006): 1-18.

2006

"Transforming Musical Sounds into Words: Narrative Method in Virginia Woolf's The Waves." Narrative: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature 13.2 (May 2005): 160-81.

2005

"Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction." College Literature. 32.3 (July 2005): 51-71.

2005

Conference Papers

Publication
Year

“Musical Ekphrasis and Intermedial Form in Walter Pater’s ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold.’” NAVSA. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, 2022.

2022

Panel Organizer: Intermedial Sounds and Sights. Presentation: “Acoustic and Profound Sound: Virginia Woolf's Critique of War.” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 2018

2018

“‘Illegal Music:’ Modernist Echoes in Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing.” Modernism Today: The Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, August, 2017

2017

“Rhythm in To the Lighthouse.” The 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Heritage. Leeds, U.K. June, 2016

2016

“Making Strange: Stein’s Intermedial Defamiliarization.” A Valentine To Gertrude Stein: The Reception of Gertrude Stein in the Arts and Humanities. Copenhagen, Denmark. May 2014

2014

Conference Proceedings

Publication
Year

'Reconfigured Terrain: Aural Architecture in Woolf's Novels.' Woolf and the City: Selected Papers from the Nineteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Sarah Cornish and Elizabeth Evans. Oregon: Clemson UP, 2010.

2010

"'As Springy as a Racehorse': Ethel Smyth's Female Pipings in Eden as Rejoinder to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own." Rock Blaster, Bridge Builder, Road Paver: The Composer Ethel Smyth. Eds. Cornelia Bartsch, Rebecca Grotjahn and Melanie Unseld. Munich: Allitera Verlag, 2010. 55-69.

2010


Elicia Clements is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Humanities and English. She has published extensively on the interdisciplinary connections between the art forms of literature and music. Articles include musico-literary links between Virginia Woolf and the composer Ethel Smyth, Woolf's narrative methods and the late compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the performative interchange between the words and the music in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All. She is co-editor of a collection of essays with Lesley J. Higgins titled Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts published by Palgrave Macmillan (2010). With the assistance of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant she has published the monograph Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language (University of Toronto Press, 2019). A chapter on Woolf and Variation Form can be found in the Routledge Companion to Music and Modernism (2022), with forthcoming chapters on Walter Pater (for Boydell & Brewer) and Ethel Smyth (Cambridge Companion) to appear in 2025. Currently, she is working on a book project titled Literary Musics in the Early Twentieth Century with the aid of another SSHRC Insight Grant.

Degrees

PhD in English Literature, York University
MA in English Literature, York University
BA (Honours) in English Literature, University of Western Ontario
BMus (Honours) in Music Education, University of Western Ontario

Professional Leadership

Chair, Department of Humanities, July 1, 2020 to June 2023.
Undergraduate Program Director for the Department of Humanities, July 1, 2018-June 30, 2020.

Research Interests

, Modernism, Interdisciplinary Studies, Intermedial Studies, Literature and Music, Performance Studies, Sound Studies, Socio-Historical Politics

Awards

  • SSHRC Standard Research Grant - 2007-2011
  • SSHRC Insight Grant - 2012-2018

Current Research Projects

Literary Musics in the Early Twentieth Century

    Summary:

    A SSHRC-funded monograph that examines the literary and musical exchange of ideas and techniques found in the works of James Weldon Johnson, Walter Pater, Langston Hughes, James Joyce, Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gertrude Stein. The project develops new understandings of trans-Atlantic “modernism” by exploring the socio-historical politics of musico-literary connections during the early twentieth century.

    Project Type: Funded
    Role: Principal Investigator

    Funders:
    SSHRC
The Politics of Intermedial Modernsim(s)

    Summary:

    A collection of essays that considers the political, social, and cultural ramifications of intermedial modernism, attempting to develop methods and provide examples of the in-between work that can disclose avenues of resistance sometimes unseen or unheard when working within one discipline or medium.

    Collaborator: Dr. Sarah Jensen
Socio-Historical Politics in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Opera

    Summary:

    This project explores literary and musical remediation in early-twentieth century operas composed by Ethel Smyth, William Grant Still, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Virgil Thomson, alongside contemporary American and Canadian composers Terence Blanchard, Ian Cusson, Dean Burry, and Sean Mayes.

    Role: Principal Investigator

All Publications


Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Variation Form in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction and Nonfiction,” The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature. Eds. Rachael Durkin, Peter Dayan, Axel Englund, Katherina Clausius. London, May 2022. 272-281. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Music-and-Modern-Literature/Durkin/p/book/9780367237240

2022

"The Efficacy of Performance: Musical Events in The Years." Virginia Woolf and Music. Ed. Adriana Varga. Bloomington & Indiana: Indiana University Press, June 2014. 180-203.

2014

Introduction. With Lesley Higgins. Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010.

2010

"Pater's Musical Imagination: The Aural Architecture of 'The School of Giorgione' and Marius the Epicurean." Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010. 152-66.

2010

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

Rev. of Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form, by Emma Sutton, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Woolf Studies Annual. 20 (2014): 176-179.

2014

Rev. of Words and Notes in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Edited by Phyllis Weliver and Katharine Ellis. Boydell Press, 2013. Nineteenth Century Prose. 42.2 (Fall 2015): 434-439.

2013

Rev. of Brad Bucknell's Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce, and Stein. The Pater Newsletter. 46 (Spring 2003): 5-9.

2003

Rev. of Paula Gillett's Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." Victorian Review. 28.2 (2002): 96-99.

2002

Books

Publication
Year

Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language. The University of Toronto Press, 2019.

2019

Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 2010.

2010

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

"How to Remediate; or, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts." Modern Drama. Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 45-72.

2019

"Oscar Wilde's Music: A Critical Response to Walter Pater." The Pater Newsletter. 59/60 (Spring/Fall 2011): 4-16.

2011

''We Cannot Retrace Our Steps': Sonorous Performativity in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All.' Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies 59 (November 2006): 1-18.

2006

"Transforming Musical Sounds into Words: Narrative Method in Virginia Woolf's The Waves." Narrative: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature 13.2 (May 2005): 160-81.

2005

"Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction." College Literature. 32.3 (July 2005): 51-71.

2005

Conference Papers

Publication
Year

“Musical Ekphrasis and Intermedial Form in Walter Pater’s ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold.’” NAVSA. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, 2022.

2022

Panel Organizer: Intermedial Sounds and Sights. Presentation: “Acoustic and Profound Sound: Virginia Woolf's Critique of War.” Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 2018

2018

“‘Illegal Music:’ Modernist Echoes in Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing.” Modernism Today: The Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, August, 2017

2017

“Rhythm in To the Lighthouse.” The 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Heritage. Leeds, U.K. June, 2016

2016

“Making Strange: Stein’s Intermedial Defamiliarization.” A Valentine To Gertrude Stein: The Reception of Gertrude Stein in the Arts and Humanities. Copenhagen, Denmark. May 2014

2014

Conference Proceedings

Publication
Year

'Reconfigured Terrain: Aural Architecture in Woolf's Novels.' Woolf and the City: Selected Papers from the Nineteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Sarah Cornish and Elizabeth Evans. Oregon: Clemson UP, 2010.

2010

"'As Springy as a Racehorse': Ethel Smyth's Female Pipings in Eden as Rejoinder to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own." Rock Blaster, Bridge Builder, Road Paver: The Composer Ethel Smyth. Eds. Cornelia Bartsch, Rebecca Grotjahn and Melanie Unseld. Munich: Allitera Verlag, 2010. 55-69.

2010