Petra Dierkes-Thrun - Salome’s Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression

Salome's Modernity would not exist without the people who accompanied and nurtured it as mentors, colleagues, and friends over the years. It started as a dissertation in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, and to my teachers there, I owe my deepest intellectual debt. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Paul A. Bov, who made the thinking and writing of this book possible through unfailing intellectual challenge and support. He has exemplified all the inspiration, trust, and skeptical rigor a true mentor and partner in critical dialogue can offer. Jonathan Arac, Lucy Fischer, and the late Eric O. Clarke served as committee members at the dissertation stage and spent much time talking and throwing around ideas about books, films, and feminist, queer, and critical theories with me in their offices and classrooms. They have been indispensable role models for me in countless ways throughout the years. Eric O. Clarke tragically passed away just a few months before this book was going to press, and I will miss him always. Philip E. Smith II supervised earlier stages of this project and published a pedagogical article of mine in his edition Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde (2008); I benefited greatly from his personal and professional support and deeply admire his scholarship on Wilde. Herbert S. Lindenberger (Stanford University) exhibited amazing energy, enthusiasm, and generosity in sharing his scholarly and pedagogical expertise and his love of opera with me, at the dissertation stage and ever since.

To Susan Teuteberg, Martina Gschell, Judy Suh, Eleni Anastasiou, Saeeda Hafiz, Beth Wightman, and Dorothy Clark, I say a special thank you for the best of friendship and shared love of people, books, and culture. David C. Rose, editor and founder of the Oscholars Web site and group ofjournals, gave me the opportunity to take charge of The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies, and to expand my professional horizons in the realm of online publishing. As I was putting the finishing touches on Salome's Modernity, I was teaching a seminar at Stanford University entitled Salome, Modernity, Transgression, and I sincerely thank the students in that class for making the last stages of writing this book not only bearable but fun. One of them, the artist Dorian Katz, contributed an illustration to this book, for which I am especially grateful.

An earlier version of appeared in Modern Language Quarterly 69.3 (September 2008): 36789. For crucial institutional and financial support, I would like to acknowledge the Comparative Literature Department at Stanford University; the English Department and College of Humanities at California State University, Northridge; the English Department at Santa Clara University; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh; and the German Catholic fellowship organization Cusanuswerk. For patient and helpful research support at various stages of the project, I am grateful to the staff at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (University of California, Los Angeles), the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the Theatermuseum Kln-Wahn, Germany. At the University of Michigan Press, my editor Tom Dwyer, editorial associate Alexa Ducsay, and managing editor Christina Milton were indispensable sources of support, and I thank them for their professionalism and enthusiasm in bringing this project to fruition.

Very special words of love and thanks go out to my family, especially to my husband, Sebastian Thrun, and our son, Jasper; my father, Rainer, and stepmother, Susanne Dierkes; and my brother, Sebastian, and his family. Without their unconditional love, unflagging support, and sense of humor, life could not be half as wonderful.