Honors class hosts 'wild' symposium

Students in Marilyn Bisch's Honors course, "Oscar Wilde: His Works and Life," showed that history is always full of surprises and new discoveries at Monday's Oscar Wilde Symposium.

The symposium was a "convivial gathering and sharing of ideas," said Bisch, a classical studies professor.

Students presented a wide variety of topics related to the life of Oscar Wilde, a famous writer and poet of the 1800s.

After working all semester for this, students presented on Wilde's presence in America, influences on his ideas, perceptions of his works and a comical reading of one of his plays.

The guest speaker, Joan Navarre, who taught at the University of Minnesota, flew in from Florida to participate in the day's events.

Navarre spoke about the influence of Edward-Heron Allen's studies of chiromancy (palm reading) on Wilde's book "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime: A Study of Duty."

Navarre recently studied Wilde in London independently.

The students who presented original research, which will be published, tied their work in with their fields of studies.

Navarre and Bisch said they felt like they knew Wilde on a first-name basis due to the great amount of research they have done on his life.

"He's like a diamond. He has all these facets," Navarre said, referring to the many different subject areas that could be easily linked to Wilde's life.

Jenni Ellington, a sophomore criminology and criminal justice major, focused her work on the three trials of Wilde toward the end of his life.

Kaelynn Hayes, a sophomore history major, researched the public opinion of Wilde in Russia.

She said she chose to research this because she is currently taking a Russian history course that focuses on the same time period.

"Oscar Wilde is an important topic because he can be related to so many different aspects, such as politics, fashion, even criminology," Hayes said.

All of the ideas that were explained were created through hours of studying old documents, newspapers and court notes and then compiling the facts into a completed picture, Bisch said.

This research is more commonly associated with graduate students and professionals.

Sara Beckman, a freshman history major, analyzed old newspaper articles and other sources and discovered that on a specific day Wilde made an intentional stop in Iowa City to have tea with a minister's daughter, a fact which had previously been an unconfirmed story.

"[The whole day] Highlight[ed] that undergraduates can do original research and get it published," Beckman said.

The research has been in the works since the beginning of the semester, Bisch said. The class has done smaller projects that have been leading up to these larger research presentations.

"This was a chance for [the students] to do original research and a professional presentation that will benefit [their] future careers," Ellington said.