Elicia A. Clements
Department of English
Department of Humanities
Associate Professor
Office: Vanier College, 206
Phone: 416-736-5158
Email: elicia@yorku.ca
Attached CV
Accepting New Graduate Students
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 UniversityMA 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
- SSHRC Standard Research Grant - 2007-2011
- SSHRC Insight Grant - 2012-2018
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
- SSHRC Standard Research Grant - 2007-2011
- SSHRC Insight Grant - 2012-2018
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.
Funders:
SSHRC
-
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.
-
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.
“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
"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.
Introduction. With Lesley Higgins. Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 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.
Rev. of Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form, by Emma Sutton, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Woolf Studies Annual. 20 (2014): 176-179.
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.
Rev. of Brad Bucknell's Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce, and Stein. The Pater Newsletter. 46 (Spring 2003): 5-9.
Rev. of Paula Gillett's Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." Victorian Review. 28.2 (2002): 96-99.
"How to Remediate; or, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts." Modern Drama. Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 45-72.
"Oscar Wilde's Music: A Critical Response to Walter Pater." The Pater Newsletter. 59/60 (Spring/Fall 2011): 4-16.
''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.
"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.
"Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction." College Literature. 32.3 (July 2005): 51-71.
“Musical Ekphrasis and Intermedial Form in Walter Pater’s ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold.’” NAVSA. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, 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
“‘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
“Rhythm in To the Lighthouse.” The 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Heritage. Leeds, U.K. June, 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
'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.
"'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.
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2025 | GS/HUMA6322 3.0 | M | Modernism, Interdisciplinarity,&the Arts | SEMR |
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 UniversityMA 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
Awards
Current Research Projects
-
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: FundedRole: Principal Investigator
Funders:
SSHRC
-
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-
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 InvestigatorAll Publications
“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
"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.
Introduction. With Lesley Higgins. Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pater Across the Arts. Eds. Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins. Palgrave MacMillan, UK, 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.
Rev. of Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form, by Emma Sutton, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Woolf Studies Annual. 20 (2014): 176-179.
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.
Rev. of Brad Bucknell's Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce, and Stein. The Pater Newsletter. 46 (Spring 2003): 5-9.
Rev. of Paula Gillett's Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." Victorian Review. 28.2 (2002): 96-99.
"How to Remediate; or, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts." Modern Drama. Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 45-72.
"Oscar Wilde's Music: A Critical Response to Walter Pater." The Pater Newsletter. 59/60 (Spring/Fall 2011): 4-16.
''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.
"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.
"Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction." College Literature. 32.3 (July 2005): 51-71.
“Musical Ekphrasis and Intermedial Form in Walter Pater’s ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold.’” NAVSA. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, 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
“‘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
“Rhythm in To the Lighthouse.” The 26th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and Heritage. Leeds, U.K. June, 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
'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.
"'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.
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2025 | GS/HUMA6322 3.0 | M | Modernism, Interdisciplinarity,&the Arts | SEMR |
