Summer Course 2024: Supervisions

What is a supervision? Participant Diana Grosser describes her experiences.

One of the things I love about Literature Cambridge summer courses, as well as one of the reasons why this was my third year attending, is how structured the whole thing is. Weeks ahead of the start date, an email pops up in my inbox, informing me about how the 5 days of the course will run. Each day starts with a lecture on a set text, then there’s a tea break, then there are the supervisions. In the afternoon, there’s a more relaxing activity, such as a visit to a college or an informal talk on topic related to the course. By now, I’m used to how things run. Yet what’s always new and surprising is the supervision.

A supervision is a small discussion group of about four people, led by one of the lectures in the course. Each group is different and, even more, each session of the group is different. This year I was in a group of four people, each with different backgrounds, different professional experience and different take on the book of the day. We meet up every day at the set place and time and we simply talk about the set book. After a couple of days people get to know each other, we start to see where everyone comes from, yet there’s always and continuously room for the books we all know and love – a new theory, a new interpretation of a character, a new understanding of the ending.

This is the best thing about the supervisions. It’s the space where the real work begins. I’m sitting in a quiet room, together with another 3 people who live and breathe Virginia Woolf, and with an experienced lecturer who knows how to guide the discussions so that the ideas bubble to the surface. Because that’s what it’s all about in here. Giving voice to our ideas. We’re not silent listeners anymore, we’re active participants, speaking out our minds and giving voice to how Virginia Woolf’s books have touched each one of us.

This year, my supervisor was Ellie Mitchell. She often starts by asking a general question about how the book resonated with us, or if any ideas from the lecture have taken hold in our minds. After this short warm-up we move on to close reading specific parts of the text. Ellie might read out loud an essential paragraph directly linked to the contents of the lecture and ask what people think about it. The last paragraph of The Waves was an interesting one to tackle. Death, irony, Mr Ramsay, ideas bounce around the room. But when it’s my turn to speak, I’m standing in the spotlight. Everyone listens and there’s always something coming back – a nod of appreciation, a question moving things into a new direction, maybe even just a passing frown quickly dissipating. The session is all about the dialogue that unfolds. It’s not a one-way street, where people talk at each other. It’s a conversation.

The most enjoyable and surprising session for me this year was on Wednesday, as we gathered up to talk about To the Lighthouse. I thought I knew the book inside-out, yet when Ellie assigned each of us two children to talk about in the session, I was baffled. I got Cam and Jasper. Just a second, who’s Jasper? Years of reading Woolf’s masterpiece and Jasper came as a blow to my appreciation of the novel. I loved it. On the evening before, I spent a couple of hours looking for Jasper and trying to figure out what my opinion of him was. It would have otherwise never occurred to me.

This Wednesday session proved me yet again that the thrill of a supervision session never goes away. I might walk in with an idea formed over years of reading Virginia Woolf or with an idea which had just blossomed the night before. Nevertheless, I can always be sure of one thing – that the supervision hour spent is incredibly rewarding. And that’s one of the reasons why I keep coming back.

Diana Grosser
Munich, Germany

Photos 1 and 2: Violet Hunt and her group; photos 3-6 Ellie Mitchell with one of her groups, 9 August 2024.
Photos by Jeremy Peters @jezpete