Nicole Wood ’22 concludes yearlong research as JCY Scholar
This article is part of a series featuring Centre College’s 2022 John C. Young (JCY) Scholars. Centre’s JCY program, now in its 32nd year, is designed to serve highly motivated seniors, allowing them to engage in independent study, research or artistic work in their major discipline or in an interdisciplinary area of their choosing. View the complete listing of JCY Scholar projects here.
John C. Young Scholar and English and French double major Nicole Wood ’22 (Lancaster, Kentucky) completed their year-long research titled “The Femme Fatale Refigured: Shifting Femininities in Early French and English Productions of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé,” and presented their work at The John C. Young Symposium on April 23 (Nicole’s pronouns are they/them).
Wood’s research is rooted in the sexy, seductive, and murderous femme fatale, a female archetype coined in 19th century France that reflects anxieties concerning the modern woman’s claim to individual and political autonomy. Turning to biblical sources for secular ends, French artists in particular popularized the historic figure of Salomé as the woman whose dancing feet sounded the death knell of Saint John the Baptist. However, Wood’s motivation for this project stems from the belief that characters of the past can be reinterpreted and used to empower contemporary audiences.
“Salomé herself has been used by religious traditions to warn against the dangers of female sexuality, which really comes down to a desire to control women’s bodily autonomy.” Wood says. “Oscar Wilde is part of an artistic movement that specifically pulls Salomé out of her original context and gives her character an entirely new life. What separates Wilde’s version of the story from his peers is how his writing and the first actresses to play Salomé open her more explicitly to feminist and queer interpretations that are still relevant today.”
“Nicole was interested in a nexus of ideas surrounding Oscar Wilde in the 1890s,” says Helen Emmitt, J. Rice Cowan Professor of English. “Specifically, they were interested in his play Salomé, which appeared in both English and French editions and therefore brought together ideas that were both English and continental about sexuality, gender, and representation.
“I was delighted to be asked to mentor the project,” Emmitt continues. “My job was very easy. I read what Nicole gave me and offered suggestions. They are quite a good scholar and didn’t need help with the basics of research or writing. Nicole’s talents were on display in the project as they wove together strands from mentions of Salomé in the Bible to artistic depictions of her to staging to audience response.”
