Academy Discourse: Celebrity culture up to and in the pandemic

About the discourse

Contemporary celebrity culture has both deep historical roots and enhanced/expanded functions in the era of social media. Given its vital importance in both defining social roles and types and articulating values and attitudes, I argue that we cannot afford to be merely anecdotal and uncritical in our relationship to it. This Discourse will briefly explore the evolution of twentieth-century US celebrity in tandem with the Hollywood studio system, the alteration of fame dynamics after the collapse of that system and the primacy, ubiquity and ambivalence of celebrity in the pandemic at a time when we are deprived of various modes of communal sociality and connectedness.

About the Speaker

Diane Negra, MRIA is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. She is the author, editor or co-editor of twelve books including Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (Routledge, 2001), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (Duke, 2006) and Imagining "We" in the Age of "I:" Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture (Routledge 2021). She has served as Guest Professor at Brown University, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Reims and Aristotle University. Professor Negra is Chair of the Irish Fulbright Commission and of the Royal Irish Academy's Working Group on Culture and Heritage.

Respondent

Dr Lucy Bolton , Reader in Film Studies and Deputy Head of Film at Queen Mary University

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This Discourse is part of our 2020/21 Series sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran LLP.