As a researcher and public humanist, Victoria Wiet (she/her) is motivated by the belief that ordinary social experience and artistic creativity–especially by the historically marginalized–is better documented than we might think. During her senior year of college at Brandeis University, she found her disparate interests in modern theatre and Victorian culture unexpectedly converge when, while researching her honors thesis on feminist performance in contemporary Britain, she learned that burlesque has its origins in the nineteenth century. Instead of presuming that such embodied performance traditions couldn’t be studied because they’re not captured by published scripts, she embarked on a PhD at Columbia University in order to uncover how precisely theatre mediated the lives of women and LGBT people in centuries past. Her current book, Theatrical License and the Pleasures of Victorian Fiction, demonstrates how the commercialization of the British stage created a culture of erotic nonconformity that inspired how Victorian novelists manipulated narrative techniques in order to envision a world where sexual diversity could thrive. To tell this story, she looks at materials such as press notices that reveal how actresses’ popularity surged after they were publicly sued for divorce; cabinet photographs which handsome stars signed for their young female fans; architects’ plans which turned refreshment rooms into spaces of homoerotic sociability; and lithographs that sought to capture cross-dressed burlesque actresses’ non-linear movements. She is also beginning a second project that tracks melodrama’s evolution from stage to screen in order to figure out why the genre remains so appealing to women and sexual minorities. 

Victoria’s commitment to the study of materials which preserve such histories has made special collections libraries her intellectual “home.” Her research has taken her to over twenty libraries across the UK and US, including fellowships at the University of Glasgow, Harvard’s Houghton Library, UCLA’s Clark Library, and UT-Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. Three years working as a graduate assistant at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library introduced her to how special collections operate behind the scenes, and the mission of such institutions to preserve and facilitate access to records of social experience and creative endeavor has become the guiding principle of her own work as an educator.

After receiving her PhD, Victoria spent a year as a lecturer at Harvard University in the English department and interdisciplinary History & Literature program. Since 2020, she has been an assistant professor of English at DePauw University, where she also contributes courses to the programs in Film & Media Arts, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and World Literature. As a teacher, she aims to incite curiosity about a historical past which feels increasingly “irrelevant” to many students and use tangible artifacts to open up a portal between past and present. 

Outside of work, Victoria enjoys going to old movies at indie cinemas, collecting midcentury paperbacks, scoping out vintage clothing stores, and watching baseball and hockey (go Mets and Rangers!). She is currently based in Indianapolis and maintains professional and social ties to the Northeast, especially New York City.