Virtual Premiere - Sandwiched In with Andrew Rimby - Wharton's "Long Secret Nights:" A Queer Gilded Age Inheritance (Recorded on 6/11/21)

In case you missed it, the Virtual Sandwiched In with Andrew Rimby - Wharton's 'Long Secret Nights:' A Queer Gilded Age Inheritance (Recorded on 6/11/21) is now available on the Library's YouTube page.

[CLICK HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iSIDY1s1G8) to access the video.

The Gilded Age is bookended by the passing of two Long Island poets, William Cullen Bryant, in 1878, and Walt Whitman, in 1892. For one prolific writer, Edith Wharton, the Gilded Age sets the stage for the formation of her poetics and her identity as a professional writer. In this talk, Andrew Rimby, who is a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University, will explore Wharton’s infatuation with Whitman’s poetic voice and how it influenced her own writing. We’ll look at a selection of her texts that contain traces of Whitman’s openly homoerotic language and even direct allusions to him. Two literary questions that structure the talk include: How does a writer, like Wharton, inherit a queer literary voice? And what happens when traditional definitions around the Gilded Age are countered by using a queer literary lens?