128110 VO Cultural Studies - MA M01 (2015W)

Celebrity is, without doubt, one of the most ubiquitous features of contemporary Western media culture. As such, it has attracted an extensive amount of multi-disciplinary scholarship that has responded to the need to theorise and historically contextualise an all-pervasive concept and cultural phenomenon. This lecture series brings together internationally renowned scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, whose contributions will explore the shifting meanings, functions, and manifestations of ‘celebrity’ in different historical contexts, social fields, and media. The themes addressed cover a broad spectrum, including the historical origins of modern celebrity culture; the mediation and appropriation of literary celebrity and its archival, biofictional, and filmic afterlives; the slippery boundaries between on- and off-screen celebrity; and the construction and circulation of celebrity through digital media. Theoretically and methodologically diverse, the talks will cast a critical spotlight on the industry and media processes that inform the production and consumption of celebrity and raise questions about cultural iconicity, gender representation, individual agency, and the role of audiences and mediator figures.

15.10. Sandra Mayer (University of Vienna/Oxford)
'Approaching Celebrity across Periods and Disciplines'

22.10. Ruth Scobie (University of Oxford)
'A Beginner’s Guide to the Beginning of Celebrity, 1700-1790'

05.11. Michael Raab (Frankfurt/Main)
'Selling Yourself by the Pound? The Portrayal of Fictional Rock Stars in Contemporary British Drama from David Hare to Simon Stephens'

12.11. Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh)
'Byron’s Unlikely Celebrity in Victorian Sermons'

26.11. Richard Dyer (King’s College, London)
'La dolce vita and the Ontology of Celebrity'

03.12. Timo Frühwirth (University of Vienna)
'An Austrian Auden: A Media Construction Story'

10.12. Chris Fletcher (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)
'‘It seems to be the fashion collecting these things’: Pursuing the Papers of Literary Celebrity, from Byron to the Present and Beyond'

17.12. Eugenie Theuer & Eva Schörgenhuber (Universities of Barcelona/Vienna)
'‘If Britney made it through 2007…’: Celebrity and Meltdown in the Age of Digital Media'

07.01. Tobias Heinrich (University of Oxford)
'Werther’s Legacy: Johann Wolfgang Goethe as Literary Celebrity'

14.01. Julia Lajta-Novak (King’s College, London)
'Re-Imagining Famous Women Artists: Fictional and Filmic Afterlives'

21.01. Diane Negra (University College Dublin)
'Animal Internet Celebrity: From Knut to Cecil'

28.01. Final Test

Please note that there will be no classes on 29 October and 19 November!