Who was Oscar Wilde? An aesthete who subverted philistine values, or pandered to bourgeois taste?  The first modern dramatist, or the last of the Victorian playwrights? An Irish nationalist, or an Anglophile? A socialist, or a shrewd literary entrepreneur? An immoralist, or a new kind of moralist? A philosopher, or a court jester?  A misogynist, or a feminist? A pioneer of  "queer theory," or someone who never quite came to terms with his sexuality?

Join us for a two day conference where we attempt to answer these questions and others.

Presenters include: Susan Bernardo, Felicia J. Ruff, Fred Roden, Shelley Salamensky, Philip Smith, Patrick W. Bixby, Loretta Clayton, Margaret D. Stetz, Anne Margaret Daniel, Marylu Hill, Jonathan Rose, and Christine Kinealy.

To register & get more information, visit http://depts.drew.edu/grad/wilde/Main.html.

"Oscar Wilde's Legacy: A Selection from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection"
Exhibition at Drew University Library
2 May-2 June 2012

Oscar Wilde died in exile in France in 1900. But his writings, his plays, his wit, and his fame lived on. This display, drawn from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan from the University of Delaware Library, focuses on how Wilde's friends and associates dealt with his legacy in the early twentieth century. Among the figures represented  by books and other items are Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's lover; the artist Aubrey Beardsley; the caricaturist  Max Beerbohm; and the novelist Ada Leverson.