Victoria W.
@vcwiet.bsky.social
Archives of the performing arts, British novel, and history of sexuality | Connoisseur of underperforming NYC sports teams | probably rewatching Mad Men. Opinions mine.
Who here is on Substack? I just joined so that I have a space write about the intersections between documentation and performance (and also movies) outside of the formal pitch-and-publish cycle. Let’s follow each other! I’m at ephemerance.substack.com.
Ephemerance | Victoria | Substack
Prof turned MSLIS student interested in performance archives + how performing artists engage w/ documentation. Finishing book about how the commercial 19th c. stage enabled erotic life to be practiced...
ephemerance.substack.com
December 5, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Who here is on Substack? I just joined so that I have a space write about the intersections between documentation and performance (and also movies) outside of the formal pitch-and-publish cycle. Let’s follow each other! I’m at ephemerance.substack.com.
Reading up on Isadora Duncan’s relationship with documentation for this project I’m doing has once again made me want to write an article titled “Ellen Terry, Mother of the Avant-Garde.” Genealogy of performance made literal!
November 16, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reading up on Isadora Duncan’s relationship with documentation for this project I’m doing has once again made me want to write an article titled “Ellen Terry, Mother of the Avant-Garde.” Genealogy of performance made literal!
I just purchased a theatrical scrapbook from the 1920s on eBay simply so I can post an example on a website about performing arts formats without worrying about copyright. This might be the most Victoria thing I’ve ever done!
November 13, 2025 at 12:45 AM
I just purchased a theatrical scrapbook from the 1920s on eBay simply so I can post an example on a website about performing arts formats without worrying about copyright. This might be the most Victoria thing I’ve ever done!
My library school classes presume none of us have used card catalogs written in library hand — little do they know what it means to a researcher of 19th century theatre at the BL!!!
September 9, 2025 at 9:15 PM
My library school classes presume none of us have used card catalogs written in library hand — little do they know what it means to a researcher of 19th century theatre at the BL!!!
For some time I’ve felt like my intellectual interests have left literary studies and shifted exclusively to film and theatre, but reading scholarship about Middlemarch (by smart young women—fellow Dorothea’s?) has made this wayward sheep return to the fold, at least for a visit.
August 1, 2025 at 2:22 PM
For some time I’ve felt like my intellectual interests have left literary studies and shifted exclusively to film and theatre, but reading scholarship about Middlemarch (by smart young women—fellow Dorothea’s?) has made this wayward sheep return to the fold, at least for a visit.
As I board my flight from ORD to LGA for RBMS (and my first game at Citifield), the ticket agent sees my Mets gear and says: “You’re in trouuuuuublllllle.”
June 24, 2025 at 12:49 PM
As I board my flight from ORD to LGA for RBMS (and my first game at Citifield), the ticket agent sees my Mets gear and says: “You’re in trouuuuuublllllle.”
I’ve been listening to all of Dylan sequentially as I pack, and though “Blood on the Tracks” has always been a top-5-of-all-time for me, I now can’t fathom the jolt of 1975: having suffered a series of duds and then lowering the turntable needle and hearing the opening chords of Tangled Up in Blue.
June 3, 2025 at 10:30 PM
I’ve been listening to all of Dylan sequentially as I pack, and though “Blood on the Tracks” has always been a top-5-of-all-time for me, I now can’t fathom the jolt of 1975: having suffered a series of duds and then lowering the turntable needle and hearing the opening chords of Tangled Up in Blue.
I'm not sure how many people here remember me from Twitter, but now that the semester's over, I figure I should share that my affiliation is somewhat changing -- after 5 years at DePauw, I'll be beginning an MSLIS in Archives Management at Simmons this Fall! For the past two years, I've been...
May 22, 2025 at 1:53 PM
I'm not sure how many people here remember me from Twitter, but now that the semester's over, I figure I should share that my affiliation is somewhat changing -- after 5 years at DePauw, I'll be beginning an MSLIS in Archives Management at Simmons this Fall! For the past two years, I've been...
Modest accomplishment worth posting about here: I just finished drafting my fourth chapter, the last of my theatre history chapters. Four more to go, but they're all novel criticism based on my dissertation, with no new archival research to incorporate.
May 14, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Modest accomplishment worth posting about here: I just finished drafting my fourth chapter, the last of my theatre history chapters. Four more to go, but they're all novel criticism based on my dissertation, with no new archival research to incorporate.
There are many worthier battles to pick with AI, but I consider it a public service to tell the world that this is literally not true! Hobhouse wrote in his diary that Lady Caro fanatically "squeezed" Vestris! He even quoted Sappho after.
April 10, 2025 at 10:10 PM
There are many worthier battles to pick with AI, but I consider it a public service to tell the world that this is literally not true! Hobhouse wrote in his diary that Lady Caro fanatically "squeezed" Vestris! He even quoted Sappho after.
Thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social, I finally got the chance to write about Callas -- and how the gap between archives and live performance can help us appreciate why MARIA is a needed intervention into the predictability of the Oscar bait-y biopic genre.
www.publicbooks.org/perfect-reco...
www.publicbooks.org/perfect-reco...
Perfect Recordings of Lost Voices - Public Books
The film itself is warning you: No matter how beautifully shot, Jolie sitting at a table is not Maria Callas.
www.publicbooks.org
April 3, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social, I finally got the chance to write about Callas -- and how the gap between archives and live performance can help us appreciate why MARIA is a needed intervention into the predictability of the Oscar bait-y biopic genre.
www.publicbooks.org/perfect-reco...
www.publicbooks.org/perfect-reco...
The old man is still alive: the new (amazing) season of You Must Remember This, but also the start of the Mets 2025 season. 🐻❄️
April 1, 2025 at 12:10 AM
The old man is still alive: the new (amazing) season of You Must Remember This, but also the start of the Mets 2025 season. 🐻❄️
Colleagues who study Victorian Britain: who can help me grasp what it makes for a theatre programme to cost one penny in 1880? The National Archives currency converter places this at 28p today, which doesn’t feel like much, but maybe pence were more difficult to come by due to wealth disparity??
March 29, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Colleagues who study Victorian Britain: who can help me grasp what it makes for a theatre programme to cost one penny in 1880? The National Archives currency converter places this at 28p today, which doesn’t feel like much, but maybe pence were more difficult to come by due to wealth disparity??
I live in an apartment building and I am 100% sure my neighbors know—and are upset—that it is baseball season again.
March 29, 2025 at 12:30 AM
I live in an apartment building and I am 100% sure my neighbors know—and are upset—that it is baseball season again.
Popping on to BlueSky to say that being a Mets fan today really reminds you of what the joy of living feels like.
March 27, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Popping on to BlueSky to say that being a Mets fan today really reminds you of what the joy of living feels like.
Millennial colleagues/friends: How many of you regularly watched Nick at Nite as a kid? “Like” this tweet as if this was a Twitter poll so that I can furnish data for my students in tomorrow’s lecture on early network television.
March 23, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Millennial colleagues/friends: How many of you regularly watched Nick at Nite as a kid? “Like” this tweet as if this was a Twitter poll so that I can furnish data for my students in tomorrow’s lecture on early network television.
I am preparing tomorrow’s lecture on the invention of television and, as a non-expert, I find my mind blown as I finally understand why exactly Liz Lemon reports to a GE executive.
March 23, 2025 at 6:46 PM
I am preparing tomorrow’s lecture on the invention of television and, as a non-expert, I find my mind blown as I finally understand why exactly Liz Lemon reports to a GE executive.
Why did I decide to teach editorial history in my literary methods course by way of “Tess”? This is a rhetorical question, as the answer is obvious (I love to make things difficult for myself).
March 13, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Why did I decide to teach editorial history in my literary methods course by way of “Tess”? This is a rhetorical question, as the answer is obvious (I love to make things difficult for myself).
With this sentence, I've drafted a chapter 12 years in the making: "Disconnected from the bodies that once handled them, Victorian theatrical memorabilia now narrate a history of sexuality that subsists in the subjunctive: not a record of what definitively was, but an index of what was possible."
February 23, 2025 at 11:29 PM
With this sentence, I've drafted a chapter 12 years in the making: "Disconnected from the bodies that once handled them, Victorian theatrical memorabilia now narrate a history of sexuality that subsists in the subjunctive: not a record of what definitively was, but an index of what was possible."
Why am I even surprised that the Oscar nominations have fêted the completely conventional “A Complete Unknown” (whose chief achievement is Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez) and snubbed the adventurous “Maria” for everything except Ed Lachman’s brilliant cinematography?
January 23, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Why am I even surprised that the Oscar nominations have fêted the completely conventional “A Complete Unknown” (whose chief achievement is Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez) and snubbed the adventurous “Maria” for everything except Ed Lachman’s brilliant cinematography?
I need to start actually writing this essay about “Maria” but instead, in true Victoria fashion, I am scrolling through finding aids looking for the sources Callas biographers cite.
January 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
I need to start actually writing this essay about “Maria” but instead, in true Victoria fashion, I am scrolling through finding aids looking for the sources Callas biographers cite.
With Lynch’s passing, occurring as I feverishly write about Callas and as I revive my adolescent love of Dylan because I’ve been thinking too much about biopics, I feel toward American culture what Tony says in the Sopranos pilot: “I came in at the end. The best is over.”
January 16, 2025 at 10:22 PM
With Lynch’s passing, occurring as I feverishly write about Callas and as I revive my adolescent love of Dylan because I’ve been thinking too much about biopics, I feel toward American culture what Tony says in the Sopranos pilot: “I came in at the end. The best is over.”
Evergreen meme, the only properly decent meme I've ever created.
January 11, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Evergreen meme, the only properly decent meme I've ever created.
Syllabus crowdsourcing time: I’m teaching an advanced course on literary methods next semester, and I’m looking for (1) A good recent-ish example of biographical criticism (which to some extent is now a standard part of our toolkit), and (2) an essay that conceptualizes the public humanities.
January 4, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Syllabus crowdsourcing time: I’m teaching an advanced course on literary methods next semester, and I’m looking for (1) A good recent-ish example of biographical criticism (which to some extent is now a standard part of our toolkit), and (2) an essay that conceptualizes the public humanities.
Realization upon seeing the new restoration of Umbrellas de Cherbourg on the big screen: it’s about the postwar replacement of the romance of the train station (Now Voyager, Casablanca) with the kitsch of the gas station.
December 29, 2024 at 9:19 PM
Realization upon seeing the new restoration of Umbrellas de Cherbourg on the big screen: it’s about the postwar replacement of the romance of the train station (Now Voyager, Casablanca) with the kitsch of the gas station.