Faculty Fellows' Lunch Featuring Petra Dierkes-Thrun

Petra Dierkes-Thrun: "Oscar Wilde, Rachilde and the Mercure de France: Queer Paris Networks in the 1890s"

Petra ​Dierkes-Thrun examines the personal and professional relations between Oscar Wilde​ and​ the French Decadent writer, salon hostess and publisher Rachilde (1860-1956)​. Dierkes-Thrun also discusses Rachilde's Parisian literary magazine, Mercure de France, which provided Wilde with a network of avant-garde writers, artists and journalists. This group played a little-known yet crucial role in defending and carrying on Wilde’s legacy after his scandalous 1895 trials and untimely death in Paris in 1900, illustrating the intricate relations between queer aesthetics and eroticism in the 1890s-1920s.

Petra Dierkes-Thrun is Director of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning and Lecturer, Comparative Literature.