The presentations of our three panelists map onto Wilde’s many cross-cultural meeting places onto his biography. While scholars often understand Wilde as providing an immanent critique of Victorian society, this panel will put emphasis on the ways that Wilde has–and continues to have–engagement with somewhat broader cultural groups.

After a brief welcome from our presider and organizer, Sandra M. Leonard, Assistant Professor of English at Kutztown University and Oscar Wilde Society member, the panel will begin with Eszter György, PhD-student at the English Department of Maynooth University, who will present her paper, “Wilde-eyed” Man of the World: Intermediality in Oscar Wilde’s Metropolitan Impressions.” This paper will speak directly to the theme of the panel by considering how the Wildean dandy figure acquires spiritual citizenship of the world. György will consider how the dandy’s poetic voyeurism reaches, through the use of intermediality and synesthesia, its utmost fulfillment in Wilde’s poetry.

The next panelist, Art Historian Anne Anderson, will present “Lionising, Lion Hunting and Educating Oscar: Wilde’s North American Lecture Tour,” which situates Wilde’s early-career relationships with celebrity figures particularly including Philadelphian Charles Godfrey Leland, a major figure in arts education. This presentation considers Wilde’s relationships to place, art, and fame, making connections to Philadelphia at a time of joyous optimism in Wilde’s career.

Our final panelist, Menglu Gao, Assistant Professor of Victorian Literature in the Department of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver, will continue our intellectual journey by addressing the influences of Chinese immigrants and aesthetics during the West Coast portion of his American lecture tour in her paper “Dorian Gray, Olfactory Sensations, and Wilde’s American Lecture Tour.” Menglu Gao’s presentation combines the biographical and literary in an interpretation of the act of smelling opium in Dorian Gray as emblematic of Britain’s coexistent desire for and resistance to immigration and oriental influences, a tension that exists today.

All panelists have been informed to limit their paper length in order to allow time for a Respondent. Our Respondent, Nicholas Frankel, author of Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years (Harvard UP, 2017) and Professor of English at VCU will kindly comment upon and synthesize the essays, concluding our tour through Wilde’s well traveled life and works.

Rationales for this panel are abundant. At a time when works by LGBTQ+ authors are being removed from schools, it is all the more important to put authors like Oscar Wilde into focus. Additionally, rather than understanding Wilde’s life as a mere tragedy, it is important to a fuller understanding of his work and legacy to take an unvarnished look at the joys and sorrows in his life and art. The papers in this panel and Nicholas Frankel’s recent scholarship invite new, complex, and multidisciplinary approaches to understanding Wilde.

This would be the first panel organized by the London-based Oscar Wilde Society (scholarly journal The Wildean, hon. patrons include Merlin Holland and Stephen Fry), so the theme of tour and travel is particularly meaningful to us. Many of us, like Wilde, will travel to Philadelphia to share our perspectives. We intend this panel and future participation to provide greater opportunities for scholarly interest in Oscar Wilde studies, including connections with Gender and Sexuality studies, Cultural studies, Decadence studies, Francophone literature, Victorian studies, Arts and Handicraft, Theatre and Performance Studies, Children’s literature, and more. Because there is continued scholarly and popular interest in Oscar Wilde, we anticipate an eager audience for this panel.