New Dominion Bookshop will host a conversation with nonfiction writer Sharon Marcus about her new book, The Drama of Celebrity, on Saturday, October 12, from 7-8 p.m.
UVA professor Jack Hamilton will moderate the discussion. This event will be free and open to the public.
“[An] insightful and often entertaining take on celebrity. . . . The linchpin of the author’s study is French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, a master of self-promotion. To the shelves of works about Bernhardt, Marcus brings a singular take―richly illustrated throughout by reproduced drawings, paintings, and photographs―that fascinates as it explains her concepts of celebrity.” —Kirkus Reviews
About the Book: Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive?
In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.
Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the “divine” Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era’s most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel.
Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
About the Author: 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. Follow her on Twitter at @MarcusSharon.
About the Moderator: Jack Hamilton is assistant professor of American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016). He is also the pop critic for Slate magazine, where he frequently writes about music, film, television, sports, and other areas of culture. His writing has appeared in print and online in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NPR, ESPN, Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other publications. He is currently writing a book about music and technology since the 1960s.
About New Dominion Bookshop
Serving Albemarle and Central Virginia since 1924, New Dominion Bookshop is the oldest independent bookseller in Virginia. Located in Historic Downtown Charlottesville, New Dominion is a general trade bookshop that serves as the hub for readings and other literary events in the community. For more information, visit ndbookshop.com.
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Chris Graham
