1 00:00:01,060 --> 00:00:24,310 Sort of. A really warm welcome to the area on this not very promising evening, 2 00:00:24,310 --> 00:00:28,810 and it's wonderful to see you and a real honour for us to welcome Michel and celebrate 3 00:00:28,810 --> 00:00:34,630 with her the event of and the publication and the fabulousness of making Oscar Wilde. 4 00:00:34,630 --> 00:00:41,560 So my name is Tess, everyone, and I'm the acting academic director here at the moment and I teach American literature. 5 00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:49,390 I'm based here and at the English faculty and and I'll just give you a brief overview of how the Eden's going to work. 6 00:00:49,390 --> 00:00:51,880 We're going to hear quickly from the author herself, 7 00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:58,420 who's going to tell us the most important things about the book and then give us the tree of hair and little bit of it read. 8 00:00:58,420 --> 00:01:04,090 And we're then going to turn to our panel who I will introduce to you in a minute. 9 00:01:04,090 --> 00:01:10,180 And there they each have some prepared responses. And then if Michelle wants to respond herself, she will. 10 00:01:10,180 --> 00:01:16,090 And if not, it's time for discussion and questions, etc. And the Q&A won't be recorded. 11 00:01:16,090 --> 00:01:20,090 So I don't know what that means in terms of the kind of comments you'll be making. But anyway, 12 00:01:20,090 --> 00:01:24,910 let's go for it and we will finish this sort of punctual 6:30 to go outside and 13 00:01:24,910 --> 00:01:29,300 drink as much wine as we possibly can before seven o'clock when we get thrown out. 14 00:01:29,300 --> 00:01:33,700 And so please do stay. And that because this is very much a celebration for us. 15 00:01:33,700 --> 00:01:40,210 So in introducing Michelle, I should say that. And what is not so long ago that Michelle was deputy director here herself? 16 00:01:40,210 --> 00:01:47,140 And then am I right that that was very much at the same time as this book was all coming to fruition and completion? 17 00:01:47,140 --> 00:01:53,640 And Michelle was an associate professor in English faculty and at Mansfield College next door. 18 00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:58,030 And it's been my privilege to be her colleague for a long time, so I'm extra excited, 19 00:01:58,030 --> 00:02:03,640 not just having had the opportunity to read this book and share this event, but also having know Michelle for a while now. 20 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:10,540 You know, I can speak to like the winter boot camp phase. And in fact, before that, the were blank from her memory. 21 00:02:10,540 --> 00:02:17,830 But the way that a research presentation at talks racing resistance about the very first and illustrating the very first 22 00:02:17,830 --> 00:02:24,670 cartoon that you found and the winter boot camp say it is kind of ingrained itself in my memory later on the manicure phase, 23 00:02:24,670 --> 00:02:30,670 which I guess was footnotes here, saying I'm giving a squad a manicure fitting that was just the finishing touch. 24 00:02:30,670 --> 00:02:34,960 So it's just really exciting to see these things can be done that come to fruition. 25 00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:39,970 And Michelle's also published on Henry James and Oscar Wilde on Alan Hollingsworth 26 00:02:39,970 --> 00:02:45,600 and on and the fantastic edited collection on late Victorian into modern. 27 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:48,580 And obviously, it's not my place to talk about this book, 28 00:02:48,580 --> 00:02:57,190 but the screen here speaks for itself a fabulous number of accolades and finally semi-finalist one of the best books of 2018, 29 00:02:57,190 --> 00:03:02,290 etc. can come and sit as near the front if you like, as you like and welcome. 30 00:03:02,290 --> 00:03:09,640 So we thought that to fit this fabulous, but we needed a panel to match, so I'm going to introduce them in order of speakers. 31 00:03:09,640 --> 00:03:15,100 So and our first two are going to be two of our wonderful graduate students. 32 00:03:15,100 --> 00:03:18,730 So Sage Goodwin and William and, well, Nicole. 33 00:03:18,730 --> 00:03:23,050 So Sage is doing a default here in history at University College, 34 00:03:23,050 --> 00:03:30,340 and her research focuses on TV coverage of the civil rights movement and and when she's not doing that very easy task, 35 00:03:30,340 --> 00:03:36,640 she's running on Integrated Resistance Research programme based it talks, which is kind of a full time job in itself, isn't it? 36 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:39,450 So it's been a real pleasure to get to know her this year. 37 00:03:39,450 --> 00:03:46,960 And the fabulous graduate student is William and, well, Michael, who's visiting just this year from France. 38 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:51,610 And he's done lots of work in 19th century American history and his current research, 39 00:03:51,610 --> 00:04:00,340 and focuses on the obliteration of African-American cultural sites in New Orleans in the first half of the 20th century. 40 00:04:00,340 --> 00:04:05,860 Next, someone's brave. You come all the way from Brighton, from University of Sussex, which we all know is not a fun journey. 41 00:04:05,860 --> 00:04:09,850 And 25 on a Friday did you take the train ride on the roof? 42 00:04:09,850 --> 00:04:13,810 And a very brave person has come all the way here from the University of Sussex? 43 00:04:13,810 --> 00:04:17,510 Dr Natalia Theory. Have I pronounce that right? I should have checked three. 44 00:04:17,510 --> 00:04:22,420 And she said she is lecturer in English and American at the University of Sussex, 45 00:04:22,420 --> 00:04:29,290 and she works particularly in American literature since 1880 and the theory of mind in Colleges and and she's currently 46 00:04:29,290 --> 00:04:34,690 completing a book that's called Experimental Experimental American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, 47 00:04:34,690 --> 00:04:40,610 which is contracted to Johns Hopkins University Press. Thanks so much for travelling all the way here to be here. 48 00:04:40,610 --> 00:04:48,220 And and finally, Dr. Elizabeth Kirsch, who became the warden of Rhodes House on next-door neighbour in 2018. 49 00:04:48,220 --> 00:04:52,540 And before that, she served for 12 years as president of Agnes Scott College in Georgia, 50 00:04:52,540 --> 00:04:57,130 which I've had the pleasure of visiting for a conference and can't wait to talk more about that. 51 00:04:57,130 --> 00:05:03,640 From 1997 to 2006, she was the founding director of Duke University's Institute for Ethics. 52 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:09,190 And she has a fell in philosophy from Oxford and where she herself was a Rhodes scholar 53 00:05:09,190 --> 00:05:14,020 and academic focus and publications in the field of moral and political philosophy, 54 00:05:14,020 --> 00:05:19,720 human rights, ethics, ethical. The ethics of human rights. 55 00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:22,010 Ethnic. Conflict and nationalism. 56 00:05:22,010 --> 00:05:28,670 Feminist theory and transitional justice, and it's a real honour that you've joined us on our panel, so thank you very much for being here. 57 00:05:28,670 --> 00:05:42,920 Without further ado, I'll hand over to Michel. Hugh, thank you very much for coming out, and thank you very much for that warm introduction, Tessa. 58 00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:52,040 It's amazing to me to be amongst colleagues who remember me talking about footnotes as if they were giving Oscar Wilde a manicure pedicure. 59 00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:56,870 But it's even more amazing to see how and the other people who make this place what it is 60 00:05:56,870 --> 00:06:02,990 and keep it running day to day still contributing to to making it going to say great. 61 00:06:02,990 --> 00:06:07,460 No, that's so tainted, making it the wonderful place that it is. 62 00:06:07,460 --> 00:06:13,670 And also, thank you to these wonderful panellists, almost all of whom I only know through Twitter. 63 00:06:13,670 --> 00:06:17,660 And it's wonderful to see that kind of pseudo reality of Twitter come to life here. 64 00:06:17,660 --> 00:06:23,630 So I'm really looking forward to hearing their thoughts about about the book. 65 00:06:23,630 --> 00:06:37,660 So I thought I would just read you a page or two just to give you a sense of what it is I was trying to do in this book. 66 00:06:37,660 --> 00:06:40,510 So just read for the next time. 67 00:06:40,510 --> 00:06:47,620 I'll just read from the very beginning, the very beginning of the first chapter is called What's the matter with Oscar Wilde? 68 00:06:47,620 --> 00:06:57,310 And this is how it starts. This book tells the story of a local Irish eccentric called Oscar, who became an international celebrity called Wild Today. 69 00:06:57,310 --> 00:07:02,410 He is one of English literature most famous authors known around the world as S. Oscar. 70 00:07:02,410 --> 00:07:11,620 He is the beloved patron saint of all things witty, decadent and over-the-top, and with every passing year, his stature seems to grow. 71 00:07:11,620 --> 00:07:15,880 But his spectacular career and tragic life didn't just happen. 72 00:07:15,880 --> 00:07:24,310 They were made possible by a series of unusual events and unique circumstances that determined his fate and his afterlife. 73 00:07:24,310 --> 00:07:35,860 Wild was not born, a dramatic genius. Yet he eventually became one through a curious process that began when he visited the United States in 1882. 74 00:07:35,860 --> 00:07:41,950 It was the age of Barnum, an era that rewarded the big, the bold and the blustering. 75 00:07:41,950 --> 00:07:44,260 Some might say we're still in that era. 76 00:07:44,260 --> 00:07:50,770 It was here that Wild's remarkable rise was set in motion and like a fairy tale in which a young nobody becomes a somebody. 77 00:07:50,770 --> 00:07:57,760 The transformative events of 1882 would divide his life sharply into before and after. 78 00:07:57,760 --> 00:08:08,470 How this happened has long been hidden from history. But new evidence now makes it possible to reveal how Oscar became wild for over a century. 79 00:08:08,470 --> 00:08:18,400 S. Oscar's life secret life lay buried and unexamined artefacts hidden from sight and scattered in sprawling repositories located all over the world. 80 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:25,090 Without today's resources, it would have been almost impossible to excavate this forgotten history and bring it to light. 81 00:08:25,090 --> 00:08:33,550 The book you are now holding in your hands or holding in your minds the book you are now holding in your hands could not have been written before. 82 00:08:33,550 --> 00:08:39,610 Now, technology's great leap forward has propelled scholarly research into the digital future. 83 00:08:39,610 --> 00:08:54,340 The golden age of the archive has arrived, so I'll leave that there and pass the microphone to thanks. 84 00:08:54,340 --> 00:09:00,370 Thank you, Michel. Um, I'll just dive in straight away. 85 00:09:00,370 --> 00:09:11,680 So reading Michelle's book gave me cause to think about many different themes that relate both to my own work and also to today's cultural moment. 86 00:09:11,680 --> 00:09:13,990 One that I found quite surprising, for example, 87 00:09:13,990 --> 00:09:20,470 was called popular cultural depictions of race I wasn't expecting when reading a book about Oscar Wilde. 88 00:09:20,470 --> 00:09:29,740 To be able to learn about the history of blackface minstrelsy, for example, another was the tension between a society hurtling towards majority, 89 00:09:29,740 --> 00:09:36,250 while at the same time straining to preserve the status quo, something that I think is resonant for today. 90 00:09:36,250 --> 00:09:41,650 But the element that I found most interesting was the fact that while Oscar Wilde is the star of the show, 91 00:09:41,650 --> 00:09:50,800 a key member of the supporting cast is the press. His journey is a constant dance between his attempts to manage his image in Michelle's book. 92 00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:58,150 He comes alive when he flings off his coat and arranges himself on a bearskin rug bedecked sofa for interview and a volatile press. 93 00:09:58,150 --> 00:10:02,800 He will ridicule him as soon as revere him, as long as it makes for a good story. 94 00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:06,970 So it's fascinating to see that fake news is far from a modern phenomenon. 95 00:10:06,970 --> 00:10:12,910 My own doctoral research considers the relationship between the civil rights movement and the press. 96 00:10:12,910 --> 00:10:19,390 You may be surprised to hear that I see parallels between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Oscar Wilde, 97 00:10:19,390 --> 00:10:27,010 both of Masters at crafting a public persona that relied on what Michel has beautifully phrased sartorial symbolism. 98 00:10:27,010 --> 00:10:34,390 The importance of clothing as a visual signifier essential to my work and threads seised upon through making us go out. 99 00:10:34,390 --> 00:10:39,130 She describes how Oscar quite stepped onto the podium on St. Patrick's Day in St. Paul. 100 00:10:39,130 --> 00:10:42,460 His exquisite clothes announced him as a master, not a slave, 101 00:10:42,460 --> 00:10:48,010 and quite his carefully chosen attire visually distanced him from the raggedy peasants costume that 102 00:10:48,010 --> 00:10:54,160 countless works of theatre and fiction had conditioned audiences to think of as Irish in the same way, 103 00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:57,460 but very intentionally wearing well tailored suits and shiny shoes. 104 00:10:57,460 --> 00:11:03,460 Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights movement deployed to respectability politics that distance them from 105 00:11:03,460 --> 00:11:09,940 the negative stereotypes of uncivilised black Americans that had dominated popular culture through their clothing. 106 00:11:09,940 --> 00:11:14,740 They made claims for therefore inclusion in American society, much as Oscar Wilde did. 107 00:11:14,740 --> 00:11:22,330 But for also, clothing didn't just show what he wasn't. It was key to showing what he was, and cultivating his personal brand was paramount. 108 00:11:22,330 --> 00:11:26,110 The importance of personal branding is something that has clear parallels with today. 109 00:11:26,110 --> 00:11:30,160 The most influential people of our time Barack Obama, Donald Trump, 110 00:11:30,160 --> 00:11:37,290 even Kim Kardashian amasses of controlling their public image, especially in the face of negative press and image. 111 00:11:37,290 --> 00:11:46,880 Instances style trumps substance. Imagine if Oscar Wilde had access to Instagram, we'd probably be seeing a lot more of those knee length breaches. 112 00:11:46,880 --> 00:11:54,080 So Instagram brings me to one of the elements of this book that resonated most deeply with me without being behind the dazzling final product. 113 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:58,490 There are many failed attempts and imperfect iterations, which we rarely see. 114 00:11:58,490 --> 00:12:04,070 Michelle's book is incredibly valuable in showing us the long road Oscar Wilde took to the genius creations we know him 115 00:12:04,070 --> 00:12:11,180 for and his efforts to keep those various hidden rewriting his own history as it was happening behind every Dorian Grey. 116 00:12:11,180 --> 00:12:16,070 There's a first lecture that was so bad. Audience members walked out. What do you think he was going out? 117 00:12:16,070 --> 00:12:20,150 Rarely do we appreciate the failures that necessarily come for success. 118 00:12:20,150 --> 00:12:24,770 And I think for everyone, especially for those like me who are just starting out on our academic journeys, 119 00:12:24,770 --> 00:12:28,290 that's an important lesson to hold on to you. Thank you. 120 00:12:28,290 --> 00:12:36,330 They'll pass everything to him. Thank you. 121 00:12:36,330 --> 00:12:41,560 That's horrible, I hated the book. You know, 122 00:12:41,560 --> 00:12:46,030 what I found most fascinating about Michelle's book is that it is not just a biography 123 00:12:46,030 --> 00:12:50,800 of wild or having a simple account of his adventures throughout the United States. 124 00:12:50,800 --> 00:12:59,430 It is a brilliantly crafted history of 19th century United States, and most particularly as a scholar of the South myself, I found captivating. 125 00:12:59,430 --> 00:13:06,670 Michelle's description of southern racial tensions, as they relate to, is that this is an memorialisation colour, 126 00:13:06,670 --> 00:13:16,030 skin tone and narrative national narrative, as my previous research focussed on colorism and beauty ideals in the antebellum south. 127 00:13:16,030 --> 00:13:23,770 I couldn't help but avidly read the passage on Wilde, the Irish as that coming to the South with the notion of whiteness was becoming 128 00:13:23,770 --> 00:13:28,060 more rigid and more and more entrenched in the post-war reconstruction era. 129 00:13:28,060 --> 00:13:32,410 You see, White being Irish was not totally considered white by white southerners. 130 00:13:32,410 --> 00:13:35,770 Rather, he was ethnic white and to become white, 131 00:13:35,770 --> 00:13:45,130 White had to embrace the concept of American whiteness or southern whiteness and root for the lost cause due to Confederate veterans. 132 00:13:45,130 --> 00:13:50,800 And this is a point that really struck me in the study, as it is intimately linked to my current project. 133 00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:56,860 There have been tangible and intangible memories and counter memories of slavery in New Orleans. 134 00:13:56,860 --> 00:14:02,830 Obviously, I enjoyed reading on Oscar Walks Confederate family, but I didn't know anything about that. 135 00:14:02,830 --> 00:14:04,930 His uncle was a Civil War veteran, 136 00:14:04,930 --> 00:14:13,370 but I mostly enjoyed a very short passage on white romanticisation and fetishisation of the Old South romanticisation, 137 00:14:13,370 --> 00:14:20,980 fuelled by his mother's bedtime tales that echoed the stories of the George Washington Cable or Charles Chestnut. 138 00:14:20,980 --> 00:14:31,660 Moreover, these romanticisation is also to be studied and actually do Michel in relation with the architecture and the tangible material heritage. 139 00:14:31,660 --> 00:14:38,230 Dreams and dreams and joked of purchasing a magnificent plantation covered with magnolia trees. 140 00:14:38,230 --> 00:14:41,890 And of course, this is a purely aesthetic. And this is what I think. 141 00:14:41,890 --> 00:14:49,160 This is how relevant it is today, because in the age of tear down would tear them down or put in a spoiler, 142 00:14:49,160 --> 00:14:58,660 etc. We only choose to remember as it was going to just twist the narrative orientations to suit a common narrative of an imagined community. 143 00:14:58,660 --> 00:15:13,340 The lost cause and the glorification of the Confederacy is still very much alive because plantations of beautiful and aesthetic. 144 00:15:13,340 --> 00:15:19,430 Excuse me. So thank you for the opportunity to engage with this book. 145 00:15:19,430 --> 00:15:28,400 I have to admit that I probably wouldn't have picked it up otherwise because it says, well on the front, like I'm kind of an American is, you know? 146 00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:31,040 Anyway, I'm happy. Black History Month. 147 00:15:31,040 --> 00:15:43,160 It's Black History Month in the US right now and I'm from East Sussex, but I'm also from Virginia, and it's kind of a rough week to be from Virginia. 148 00:15:43,160 --> 00:15:50,480 We're finding out more and more about how many public officials in Virginia have worn blackface pretty recently. 149 00:15:50,480 --> 00:15:59,900 So this history is frighteningly current. And as Michelle shows, not only in the U.S. but also the U.K. 150 00:15:59,900 --> 00:16:06,020 Christine Grandi has recently pointed out in her work on the variety show the black and White Minstrel Show, 151 00:16:06,020 --> 00:16:14,480 which ran on the BBC from nineteen fifty eight to nineteen seventy eight, that it's very recent history here as well. 152 00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:21,920 So Michelle's new book making Oscar Wilde, offers fresh and surprising insights into that history by layering in queer, 153 00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:27,770 Irish and Irish American histories as as William was pointing out a moment ago. 154 00:16:27,770 --> 00:16:35,210 Above all, it seems to me that she shows definitively how aesthetic refinement in the form of what has become instantly 155 00:16:35,210 --> 00:16:42,560 recognisable as Oscar Wilde's literary wit emerges as an effect above all of a mise on a beam of national, 156 00:16:42,560 --> 00:16:49,940 racial, ethnic and sexual masquerades, both on Wilde's part and on the part of his many imitators. 157 00:16:49,940 --> 00:16:54,450 Moreover, those imitators Michelle shows really wonderfully indissoluble. 158 00:16:54,450 --> 00:17:02,240 She became a part of Wilde's persona, helping to constitute his celebrity even as they parodied or exploited it. 159 00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:08,630 So Michelle Wonders offers a beautifully nuanced account of what it meant for, well, to be Irish in Dublin, 160 00:17:08,630 --> 00:17:15,620 Irish and Oxford English, an Oxford English in America, Irish in America and Irish American. 161 00:17:15,620 --> 00:17:22,070 Through striking archival examples, she shows how each positioning rendered the wilder in persona and person, 162 00:17:22,070 --> 00:17:26,030 subject to new and different dangers and affordances. 163 00:17:26,030 --> 00:17:32,540 For example, she positions Wilde as an Irishman in an America that has no patience for a new, nuanced identity. 164 00:17:32,540 --> 00:17:37,250 When she writes, quote from the Wild was in his support of Irish home rule. 165 00:17:37,250 --> 00:17:41,030 He often saw himself as British first and Irish second. 166 00:17:41,030 --> 00:17:47,270 Moreover, he felt himself part of an international linguistic community for whom English was a lingua franca, 167 00:17:47,270 --> 00:17:56,320 bridging ethnic and national divides in America. However, where ethnic divisions were more, numerous such cosmopolitan ideas had little traction. 168 00:17:56,320 --> 00:18:02,030 Their world was perceived as part of an ethnic community, the Irish, rather than a linguistic one, 169 00:18:02,030 --> 00:18:08,570 the Anglophone and the United States, while its politics met with little sympathy and much misunderstanding. 170 00:18:08,570 --> 00:18:14,600 His nuanced position as Irish by birth and British by choice was taken as equivocation. 171 00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:21,560 So, so what looks like complexity in one sphere looks like dissembling and another a masking or 172 00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:27,410 performance that seems to prefigure the radical instability that critics have read in Wilde's wit. 173 00:18:27,410 --> 00:18:35,000 In the context of late 19th century US attitudes toward Irish Americans, while the Oxon Ian appeared to be engaged in ethnic, 174 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:42,170 if not racial passing of the kind that could warrant brutal reprisals, he would have had better success if he'd gone the other way. 175 00:18:42,170 --> 00:18:51,020 As Michael Rogan showed in his 1996 book on immigrant Jews in Hollywood, blackface, white noise, blackface and other forms of racial masquerade, 176 00:18:51,020 --> 00:18:56,000 Rogan showed were a crucial medium of assimilation for white ethnic immigrants, 177 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:01,040 essentially performing an alliance with whiteness by parodying blackness. 178 00:19:01,040 --> 00:19:08,660 Michelle offers us a fascinating look at the many blackface imitations of Oscar Wilde that circulated on the stage and in visual culture, 179 00:19:08,660 --> 00:19:11,870 rendering his Irishness as blackness. 180 00:19:11,870 --> 00:19:18,900 I was also fascinated by Michele's description of how, in turn and identification with his Irish-American maternal uncle John Kingsbury. 181 00:19:18,900 --> 00:19:24,680 LG, a powerful southern slave owner, gave Wilde a different access to whiteness, 182 00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:29,390 positioning Irish home rule as a parallel to beleaguered southern states rights, 183 00:19:29,390 --> 00:19:36,110 wild war, Irish nationalism, as opposed to Irish Americanness as a kind of Confederate face. 184 00:19:36,110 --> 00:19:43,820 We begin to see and by the way, he probably was racist, right? But you know, you would have to be to put on a Confederate Phasiwe, he began. 185 00:19:43,820 --> 00:19:48,860 We begin to see anticipations of the reversals that brought us Hollywood's iconic 186 00:19:48,860 --> 00:19:53,090 Hollywood cinema's most famous Confederate Irish-American Scarlett O'Hara, 187 00:19:53,090 --> 00:19:57,560 who dresses in green curtains to defend a plantation home named after the hill of Tara, 188 00:19:57,560 --> 00:20:04,550 a symbol of ancient Irish sovereignty played in the MGM film, of course, by the English actress Vivien Leigh. 189 00:20:04,550 --> 00:20:09,880 These multiple layers of racial and ethnic masquerade were both performed intentionally by wild. 190 00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:15,850 And unintentionally absorbed into his persona from the many imitations and parodies that helped make it. 191 00:20:15,850 --> 00:20:19,960 But what perhaps most interests me amongst the astonishing range of performer performances 192 00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:24,910 that Michelle shows us is the blackface the female impersonators such as The Only Leon, 193 00:20:24,910 --> 00:20:32,620 the stage name of the Irish American performer Frances Patrick Glassie, who starred in the show Patience Wild or the Sisters of Oscar. 194 00:20:32,620 --> 00:20:35,920 So female impersonation blackface. Oscar Wilde. 195 00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:44,500 This racialized ethnicities female performance not only points of the gender reversals that have so long been associated with Wilde's writing, 196 00:20:44,500 --> 00:20:48,700 but also helps us to see how closely into our articulated gender and race are, 197 00:20:48,700 --> 00:20:53,860 particularly in the late 19th century, the only Leon dance is the lead in patients wild. 198 00:20:53,860 --> 00:21:00,130 Tantalisingly soon after Franco's troublingly specific date for the great paradigm shift, 199 00:21:00,130 --> 00:21:07,540 when we stopped thinking of sodomy as a set of acts and began thinking of the homosexual as a species of person, 200 00:21:07,540 --> 00:21:14,350 the only Leon, this impersonator helps us to see a paradigm of sexuality in transition. 201 00:21:14,350 --> 00:21:20,230 As Eve Cedric so powerfully described in the epistemology of the closet as such, 202 00:21:20,230 --> 00:21:25,120 Cedric points out in her essay Tales of the Avuncular It and as Michelle's account confirms, 203 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:31,690 both the 19th century concept of sexual inversion and the Homo hetero binary that comes to dominate accounts 204 00:21:31,690 --> 00:21:39,490 of sexuality in the 20th century address Wilde's range of desires and embodied in habitations very poorly. 205 00:21:39,490 --> 00:21:44,140 Blackface sexual masquerade instead seems to open up the study of Wilde to 206 00:21:44,140 --> 00:21:48,070 another set of questions that American Studies has recently explored in new and 207 00:21:48,070 --> 00:21:52,930 exciting ways in which I believe will no doubt be taken up further still at the 208 00:21:52,930 --> 00:21:56,920 colloquium on queer black performance later this month at St. John's College, 209 00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:06,580 and which I'm very sad to miss. New scholarship tells us that while race and sex are irreducible to one another, they are in many ways co constituted. 210 00:22:06,580 --> 00:22:15,220 We're reminded by the only Leon's parody of Wilde that the blackface performances of Al Jolson in the jazz singer and the singing Fool. 211 00:22:15,220 --> 00:22:23,920 He's blackface to assign femininity to the ethnic character, as well as ultimately confer whiteness on the star, as as Rogan argues. 212 00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:31,690 We might read these scenes of racial and sexual crossing with Kyla Schiller, for example, whose recent brilliant book The Vile Politics of Feeling, 213 00:22:31,690 --> 00:22:37,720 argues in part that when we understand the neo lamarche and underpinnings of 19th century race science, 214 00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:43,600 we're forced to conclude that sex differentiation itself is always racialized. 215 00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:48,280 Binary sex, she argues, was seen as a feature of only the most civilised, 216 00:22:48,280 --> 00:22:52,960 but in quotation marks there with the category women serving as the site of 217 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:58,600 sentimental overflow that allowed the category men to achieve ideal rationality. 218 00:22:58,600 --> 00:23:04,330 Sex in Schiller's reading, there's not just intersex intersect with race, but is produced by it. 219 00:23:04,330 --> 00:23:08,680 It's an account that tracks well with Hortense Spillers influential argument that 220 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:14,800 the Middle Passage and chattel slavery produce processes of violent engendering. 221 00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:20,710 See Rileys Norton in his recent book Black on Both Sides A Racial History of Trans Identity, 222 00:23:20,710 --> 00:23:24,580 built on Spillers description of engendering to argue that quote, 223 00:23:24,580 --> 00:23:28,300 it would stand to reason that gender indefinite ness would become a critical 224 00:23:28,300 --> 00:23:33,280 modality of political and cultural manoeuvring within figuration of blackness. 225 00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:40,780 Illustrated, for example, by the frequency with which narratives the fugitive ity included crossed gendered modes of escape. 226 00:23:40,780 --> 00:23:48,670 Norton is referring, of course, to tropes of racial and gender passing narratives such as that of William and Ellen Kraft's escape from slavery, 227 00:23:48,670 --> 00:23:58,270 in which Ellen Craft masqueraded as Williams. What invalid white master or in Harriet Jacobs masquerade as a male sailor in her own escape. 228 00:23:58,270 --> 00:24:01,900 Such real events are echoed in fictional narratives of escape from slavery, 229 00:24:01,900 --> 00:24:06,700 such as William Hill's Black Brown Patel and Mark Twain's put on her Wilson. 230 00:24:06,700 --> 00:24:15,650 It's fitting that in her analysis of the Amelia of Twenty five essay Sorry Memoir of the Female Washington-Williams, 231 00:24:15,650 --> 00:24:17,200 Sorry, I'm just getting all tangled up here. 232 00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:24,310 Essie May Washington-Williams, who was the black daughter of segregationist South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond? 233 00:24:24,310 --> 00:24:29,710 Christina Sharp reads Washington-Williams as deliberately reframing the monstrous intimacy 234 00:24:29,710 --> 00:24:34,630 between a patrician white man and a black servant not only as plantation romance, 235 00:24:34,630 --> 00:24:40,270 but as quoting Oscar Wilde, the love that dare not speak its name. 236 00:24:40,270 --> 00:24:47,080 I want to conclude by turning to Michelle's incredibly compelling reading of Wilde's plays as drawing on minstrel tropes, 237 00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:56,140 especially for their wit refined, decadent aristocratic wit, as revealed as rooted in the low form of racial masquerade. 238 00:24:56,140 --> 00:25:03,100 The English dandy imitating the the black dandy minstrel figure rather than the reverse. 239 00:25:03,100 --> 00:25:08,950 This reading sheds new light on existing work that has focussed on the gender reversals that characterise this way. 240 00:25:08,950 --> 00:25:14,330 For instance. A line of dialogue from Gwendolyn in the importance of being earnest quote, 241 00:25:14,330 --> 00:25:21,050 the home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man and certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties. 242 00:25:21,050 --> 00:25:25,370 He becomes painfully effeminate. Does he not? And I don't like that. 243 00:25:25,370 --> 00:25:33,500 It makes men so very attractive. Such moments of reversal have long been a centrepiece of readings of Wilde as a queer author. 244 00:25:33,500 --> 00:25:37,250 By drawing attention to the minstrel affinities of these performances of wit, 245 00:25:37,250 --> 00:25:45,770 Michelle shows us how and offers us a new archive through which to trace what Daphne Brooks has identified as the black origins of camp. 246 00:25:45,770 --> 00:25:51,830 For example, in the cakewalk that would itself be identify imitated in minstrel shows. 247 00:25:51,830 --> 00:26:00,170 And because of this, we begin to see some of the artistic payoff of these genealogies of racial and sexual crossing in American studies, 248 00:26:00,170 --> 00:26:07,820 which are intimated in Schiller's analysis of sentimental fiction. And in Rogan's reading of the white ethnic sentimental performances of what the 249 00:26:07,820 --> 00:26:14,870 music critic Carl Wilson has called schmaltz in his well-known book on Celine Dion. 250 00:26:14,870 --> 00:26:20,030 It's all related, cheesy or sentimental style and its ostensible opposite. 251 00:26:20,030 --> 00:26:25,880 While wilder and dry wit turn out to be counterparts in an aesthetics of embodied crossings, 252 00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:31,520 it would be hard to overestimate the importance of vicarious ness in defining the sentimental. 253 00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:37,970 If Sedgwick tells us in a chapter that also sketches the interdependency of sentimentalism and wit, 254 00:26:37,970 --> 00:26:44,780 what making Oscar Wilde shows us with astonishing concreteness is how deeply embedded in concrete histories of ethnic, 255 00:26:44,780 --> 00:26:55,640 racial and sexual masquerade that vicarious ness is. 256 00:26:55,640 --> 00:27:02,540 Well, I feel like a bit of an imposter here and not being a historian, not being an American studies. 257 00:27:02,540 --> 00:27:13,640 But I have to say that I was so delighted to basically have the excuse to read this book because it really is absolutely enthralling. 258 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:23,450 I mean, you know, you see all those wonderful quotes up there. I came to it, you know, thinking that I knew a little bit about, I mean, I'm American. 259 00:27:23,450 --> 00:27:32,900 I know something about 19th century America. But it was it was really quite an extraordinary story to to read. 260 00:27:32,900 --> 00:27:36,260 And I and so I just want to, you know, as a non historian, 261 00:27:36,260 --> 00:27:48,200 as somebody who has wrestled with questions of race and ethics and memory, both in my in my scholarly work, but also, you know, 262 00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:53,090 in in being born in a rose house, in being president of a southern college, 263 00:27:53,090 --> 00:28:01,970 I just wanted to to to touch on a few of the things that the kind of thoughts that that it prompted to read this extraordinary story. 264 00:28:01,970 --> 00:28:07,580 First, though, I want to say that it's a it's a beautiful example of history as detective story. 265 00:28:07,580 --> 00:28:14,750 I really, I loved Michel, your opening of coming across. 266 00:28:14,750 --> 00:28:23,600 I guess it was the courier in Ives plate, which which everybody, if you haven't read the book, I know there's copies up there. 267 00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:29,930 You know this. This amazing, you know, I think of Courier Ives, as you know, Christmas scenes, you know, 268 00:28:29,930 --> 00:28:38,090 very much the kind of stereotypical all-American art production, visual culture production. 269 00:28:38,090 --> 00:28:45,530 And so there is this this engraving or drawing of Oscar Wilde in blackface? 270 00:28:45,530 --> 00:28:51,050 And and you came across that in an hour and an archive and and then also, I guess, 271 00:28:51,050 --> 00:29:00,920 came across the the kind of playing cards these trading cards of Oscar Wilde clearly depicted through his dress, which I you know, 272 00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:09,410 I loved your point, sage, about how how people's identity is connected with their with their dress as Chinese, 273 00:29:09,410 --> 00:29:14,300 as African-American, etc. and that initially you were like, OK, this is just too weird. 274 00:29:14,300 --> 00:29:24,950 And this is not the project I'm currently working on, but that it kept drawing you to try to explain this and to and to understand it. 275 00:29:24,950 --> 00:29:37,310 And so I found that incredibly compelling. As several of the folks here have have have mentioned, it is a really extraordinary. 276 00:29:37,310 --> 00:29:45,410 This depiction of Oscar Wilde American journey in 1882 and the ways in which he both sought to 277 00:29:45,410 --> 00:29:54,260 catapult to fame and to exploit all of the mechanisms of becoming famous in in 1980 in that period, 278 00:29:54,260 --> 00:30:05,330 but also all of the ways in which he was exploited and parodied that it uncovers this fascinating brew Irishness as blackness, 279 00:30:05,330 --> 00:30:09,610 the the the intersections of stigmatised I. 280 00:30:09,610 --> 00:30:24,310 Entities, gender, race and the ways in which popular culture in ways that you know, as we look at it now seem extraordinarily blatant and to me, 281 00:30:24,310 --> 00:30:28,420 surprising, you know, not as a scholar of 19th century visual culture, you know, 282 00:30:28,420 --> 00:30:33,820 so I had never really looked at these kinds of visual representations. 283 00:30:33,820 --> 00:30:40,180 And so it it it it is a, I think, a very salutary. 284 00:30:40,180 --> 00:30:49,480 It's a great moment to read this. Natalia's also mentioned this at a time when in the United States and in other places, but in the United States, 285 00:30:49,480 --> 00:31:02,260 we have seen over the last several years a kind of eruption of of both racist tropes, xenophobic tropes, 286 00:31:02,260 --> 00:31:11,830 intersections between different stigmatised identities being brought to the public sphere and in ways that I think have been quite for some people, 287 00:31:11,830 --> 00:31:19,840 maybe not surprising, I think for many Americans, very surprising in their ruthlessness and their cruelty. 288 00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:28,600 And to see how much that strand, you know, is still present in American culture, 289 00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:34,180 the the and, you know, most most tellingly in the last couple of weeks, 290 00:31:34,180 --> 00:31:46,330 you know, to to think of blackface still having been employed in a in a sort of amusing way in the 1980s, you know, by people in their late 20s. 291 00:31:46,330 --> 00:31:48,940 You know, I was a college student in the in the early 80s, 292 00:31:48,940 --> 00:31:54,080 and so I was just really thinking about like what would make somebody, you know, put put on blackface. 293 00:31:54,080 --> 00:32:07,090 So so the the I think it's a it's a remarkably rich and nuanced portrayal at a time when we really need to understand and to and to 294 00:32:07,090 --> 00:32:23,620 dig deep into understandings of of racial stigma and how visual culture and popular culture reinforces various forms of racial, 295 00:32:23,620 --> 00:32:26,500 ethnic and gendered stigma. 296 00:32:26,500 --> 00:32:39,350 And also the combinations of these how Oscar Wilde was by his by this interesting identity as being kind of English kind of Irish, 297 00:32:39,350 --> 00:32:44,110 a paragon of manliness, somebody who was, you know, in some in some of his depictions, 298 00:32:44,110 --> 00:32:54,280 somebody who was questioning notions of manliness that he he invited by this, you know, 299 00:32:54,280 --> 00:33:03,440 within American culture being elided, his identity being elided with all of these other stigmatised identities. 300 00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:10,600 So as an American non historian, I think it was it was just an extraordinary story to read, 301 00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:16,070 and I think a very telling story to read within the contemporary context. 302 00:33:16,070 --> 00:33:20,500 So the other pieces that I found quite fascinating. 303 00:33:20,500 --> 00:33:22,780 One was, I mean, I did not know, for instance, 304 00:33:22,780 --> 00:33:37,180 that the interview was a new art form and the the it is an amazing story about how Oscar Wilde became a great writer and what it was, 305 00:33:37,180 --> 00:33:47,740 what were the practises and the experiences that led him to become this extraordinary that a great writer of dialogue, a great writer of of wit. 306 00:33:47,740 --> 00:33:56,110 And that part of it was, as Natalia mentioned, that, you know, he he drew on Crystal Crystal in story. 307 00:33:56,110 --> 00:33:59,080 Part of it was also the fact that he was interviewed so often. 308 00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:07,090 And you talk about how I think it was nice he had he did 98 interviews in his lifetime and think I'm remembering that no right, 309 00:34:07,090 --> 00:34:11,830 95 of which were in 1882 in America, 310 00:34:11,830 --> 00:34:20,470 and that he starts out as this dull, hyper scholastic lecturer who you know who, 311 00:34:20,470 --> 00:34:26,500 other than the the exotic presentation on stage, would not draw an audience. 312 00:34:26,500 --> 00:34:32,140 But through these interviews, learns how to be succinct and witty. 313 00:34:32,140 --> 00:34:36,430 And you know how all of that kind of fed into his artistry later on. 314 00:34:36,430 --> 00:34:42,520 So I thought it was a really fascinating look at ad. You know, we now live in the in the social media age. 315 00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:48,190 People are being urged to be witty in 140 characters or less. 316 00:34:48,190 --> 00:34:58,300 But how the precursor to the ways in which our media forms shape writerly practises and help people 317 00:34:58,300 --> 00:35:07,120 cultivate writerly skills I thought was a very interesting part of the of the the Oscar Wilde story. 318 00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:18,850 Finally, and this is. Where it kind of comes to my, you know, drawing, I guess most closely to things that I have thought about and wrestled with. 319 00:35:18,850 --> 00:35:29,170 I think Michelle does an extraordinary job of of painting a very nuanced picture of of Oscar Wilde as both, of course, very progressive. 320 00:35:29,170 --> 00:35:35,440 There's wonderful passages about his feminism and how that was cultivated and 321 00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:41,350 honed in his in his time in in America and the people that he encountered, 322 00:35:41,350 --> 00:35:53,720 but also the ways in which he played into as part of this seeking acceptance within American society. 323 00:35:53,720 --> 00:36:04,060 You know, he he had a a an African-American manservant who he would callously and casually refer to as his slave. 324 00:36:04,060 --> 00:36:07,780 And so, you know, all the as we think about. 325 00:36:07,780 --> 00:36:13,900 So you know what, I have often been thinking about in the last few years and and also since coming to Rhodes 326 00:36:13,900 --> 00:36:22,480 House is how we make sense of and and and develop moral judgements of historical characters. 327 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:32,530 You know, he is now saying to Oscar, you know, you present him as a very complex individual, both in terms of his attitudes towards race and sex, 328 00:36:32,530 --> 00:36:45,130 his his his his attitudes towards the truth, his desperate desire to be accepted and to be famous. 329 00:36:45,130 --> 00:36:57,130 You know, a very complex character and and and personality who has since that time really become kind of a saint of of gay rights, you know? 330 00:36:57,130 --> 00:37:01,930 And conversely, we look at people like Cecil Rhodes, you know, 331 00:37:01,930 --> 00:37:11,890 who is has now become sort of the the fulcrum of everything that's bad about British imperialism, 332 00:37:11,890 --> 00:37:17,470 you know, kind of Rhodes is the personification of it. And so I've been thinking a lot about that, 333 00:37:17,470 --> 00:37:26,110 about kind of how historically people come to stand for and to be known for either 334 00:37:26,110 --> 00:37:35,830 their best or their worst qualities and what work that is doing in the present day. 335 00:37:35,830 --> 00:37:41,380 You know what work it's doing in the present day for Oscar Wilde to be a saint, 336 00:37:41,380 --> 00:37:53,680 what work it's doing in the present day for Rhodes to be a, you know, the worst of the imperialists, if you will. 337 00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:59,230 So as I have often found myself talking to the Rhodes community, 338 00:37:59,230 --> 00:38:08,620 talking to other communities about needing to develop a more nuanced understanding of that 339 00:38:08,620 --> 00:38:16,120 that contextualises people in their time to understand their attitudes within their time, 340 00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:22,990 and then to understand why we need them to play angelic or demonic roles in our own time. 341 00:38:22,990 --> 00:38:28,690 And then ultimately, I guess how, you know, contemporary movements, 342 00:38:28,690 --> 00:38:38,320 contemporary institutions all owe their origins to flawed and complicated human beings. 343 00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:43,360 And I think you've done a beautiful job in this book of sketching this very flawed and 344 00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:50,410 complicated human being and making us appreciate all of the heroic aspects of of his life, 345 00:38:50,410 --> 00:39:09,000 the tragic aspects of his life, but also drawing us to become more nuanced in our own judgements of historic figures.