"Sharon Marcus' THE DRAMA OF CELEBRITY (in convo w/ André Dombrowski)"

"Sharon Marcus' THE DRAMA OF CELEBRITY (in convo w/ André Dombrowski)"

Please join us for a reading and discussion of THE DRAMA OF CELEBRITY w/ author Sharon Marcus in conversation w/ André Dombrowski.

THE DRAMA OF CELEBRITY is a look at celebrity over the past 200 years. Arguably invented in the 18th century, the book shows, through archival research and vintage scrapbooks, that celebrity endorsements and fan mail were not invented in Hollywood. Marcus uses Sarah Bernhardt, or the 19th century Lady Gaga, as her through line throughout to show the continuities between the past and present. The book also uniquely offers a model for how celebrity works: icons are not merely famous for being famous, the media alone cannot make or break stars, and fans are not simply passive dupes. Marcus argues that although some can find celebrity culture disdainful, there is nothing inherently problematic about it and stardom can actually be of real positive import.

SHARON MARCUS is the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is a founding editor of Public Books and the author of the award-winning Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton) and Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London. Twitter: @MarcusSharon

ANDRÉ DOMBROWSKI’s research and teaching center on the arts and material cultures of France and Germany, and their empires, in the mid to late nineteenth century. He is particularly concerned with the social and intellectual rationales behind the emergence of avant-garde painting in the 1860s to 1880s, including Impressionism. Committed to interdisciplinary inquiry, he places the development of modern art firmly within the histories of technology, science, politics, sexuality, and psychology. He has written books and articles on such crucial artists of the period as Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Adolf von Menzel, to name but a few. He has also published on the political imagery surrounding the Dreyfus Affair and Second Empire decorative arts.

For more information, visit: https://www.pennbookcenter.com/event/sharon-marcus-drama-celebrity-convo-w-andré-dombrowski