Teaching Virginia Woolf in Sin City: Vegas Entertainers and a New Feminist Heritage

Feminist discourse is evolving and a new wave of feminist consciousness is appearing in the media, in political debates, and in the classroom. I teach literature at a community college in Las Vegas, where the students are similar to the “common readers” of Woolf’s Morley College in their desire to educate themselves, in their educational preparedness, and in their socioeconomic circumstances. Many of my students work as entertainers on The Strip and throughout my four years of teaching in Sin City, I have observed that my female students who work in the sex entertainment industry take a special interest in Woolf’s work. These students connect their concerns about female independence, sexual assault, pay inequality, and body-shaming, with Woolf’s feminist writings. Many of these women strongly identify with Woolf’s declarations of independence in A Room of One’s Own, as well as some of her most radical philosophies, such as her proclamation in Three Guineas that, “to sell a brain is worse than to sell a body.” Woolf speaks to and for these women in unique ways, and their responses to her work reflect a new, fourth wave feminist awareness. This study considers emerging, fourth wave feminist readings of Woolf both in theory and in practice. I wish to share the unique experience of teaching Woolf’s work to college students who identify as sex-entertainment workers, and highlight ways that these contemporary women are using Woolf’s work to create a new feminist heritage.