Someone who left school and didn’t finish their dOctOraTe until 30 years later is “vAstLy SuPeRiOr”?
Cmon man lol
Outrages (2019)
Wolf's book Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love was published in 2019, based on the 2015 doctoral
thesis she completed under the
supervision of
Trinity College, Oxford, literary scholar Stefano-Maria Evangelista.
[23][24] In the book, she studies the repression of homosexuality in relation to attitudes towards divorce and prostitution, and also in relation to the censorship of books.
[92]
Outrages was published in the UK in May 2019 by
Virago Press.
[93] On June 12, 2019, Outrages was named on the
O, The Oprah Magazine's "The 32 Best Books by Women of Summer 2019" list.
[94] The following day, the US publisher recalled all copies from US bookstores.
[95]
In a 2019 BBC radio interview, broadcaster and author
Matthew Sweet identified an error in a central tenet of the book: a misunderstanding of the legal term "
death recorded", which Wolf had taken to mean that the convict had been executed but which in fact means that the convict was pardoned or the sentence was commuted.
[96][97][98] He cited
a website for the
Old Bailey Criminal Court, which Wolf had referred to as one of her sources earlier in the interview.
[99] Reviewers have described other errors of scholarship in the work.
[100][101]
Wolf appeared at the
Hay Festival, Wales in late May 2019, a few days after her exchange with Sweet, where she defended her book and said she had already corrected the error.
[102] She stated at an event in Manhattan in June that she was not embarrassed and felt grateful towards Sweet for the correction.
[103][104]On October 18, 2019, it became known that the release of the book by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the United States was being canceled, with copies already printed and distributed being pulled and pulped.
[105] Wolf expressed the hope that the book would still be published in the US.
[106][107]
A UK paperback edition of the book was published by Virago in November 2020, with the incorrect references to the execution of men for sodomy that were included in the hardback edition removed. Interviewed about the new edition, Matthew Sweet said that the book continues to misread historical sources: "Dr Wolf has misrepresented the experiences of victims of child abuse and violent sexual assault. This is the most profound offence against her discipline, as well as the memories of real people on the historical record". Cultural historian
Fern Riddell called the book a "calumny against gay people" in the nineteenth century and said that Wolf "presents child rapists and those taking part in acts of bestiality as being gay men in consensual relationships and that is completely wrong". The Daily Telegraph reported that there had been calls for Wolf's 2015 DPhil to be re-examined, and for Virago to withdraw the book.
[108] In a statement to The Guardian, Wolf said the book had been reviewed "by leading scholars in the field", and said "it is clear that I have accurately represented the position".
Oxford University stated that a "statement of clarification" to Wolf's thesis had been received and approved, and would be "available for consultation in the Bodleian Library in due course".[109]
In March 2021, Times Higher Education reported that Wolf's original thesis remained unavailable six years after it was examined. Oxford doctoral graduates can request an embargo of up to three years, with the potential for renewal.[110] The thesis finally became available in April 2021, with nine pages of corrections attached dealing with the misreading of historic criminal records.[111][24] Wolf had submitted the thesis to the archive in December 2020, more than five years after her DPhil was awarded, and she had requested a one-year extension to the embargo period so that she could seek legal advice.[112] The extension request was declined.[113]
Outrages has been used as an example in university teaching about the danger of misreading historical sources.[114]
carry on