Wilde Pedagogy: Digitized Resources and Gender Analysis of Periodical Visuality

This essay describes an assignment asking students enrolled in "Wilde Years: Oscar Wilde and the 1890s" to locate a cartoon or image in Punch, the Yellow Book, or Savoy and analyze this visual image in relation to the discourses of gender, aestheticism, and/or decadence. In addition, based upon a survey of student practices and attitudes involved in the assignment, this essay considers the impact of newly-available digitized archives on pedagogy. Not surprisingly, students favored searching for material online rather than using hard copies in the library, but they also reported challenges in searching for images. The essay concludes by considering the relation between digital resources and the quality of students' completed work.