Skip to Main Content

Director's Talk | Sex, Sin, and Punishment: Oscar Wilde and Willa Cather

Date: Thursday, March 1, 2018
Time: 7–8:30pm
Location: The Wolfsonian–FIU @ 1001 Washington Avenue

Share / Save   

Wolfsonian director Tim Rodgers takes to the podium for a talk on sexuality and decadence at the turn of the century. Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment for “gross indecency” in 1895 prompted Willa Cather, one of America’s most beloved authors, to write a scathing summary of all that Wilde represented to her: immoral sex, frivolity, and wasted talent. This lecture will explore how Wilde and Cather, both gay writers, came to hold opposing values and aesthetics that prevented them from being compatriots.

Free and open to the public