Media and film studies

Celebrity, Media and Culture

Module code: P5014
Level 6
30 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Seminar
Assessment modes: Coursework

Celebrities are an enduring feature of popular culture, from cinema to the news. Spectacular individuals permeate our media landscape via social media, high fashion and internet gossip.

This module encourages you to engage with historical and contemporary cultures of celebrity. It fosters a critical understanding of the construction of stardom, and of the political and cultural climates in which different kinds of celebrities and their fans emerge. In looking across the spectrum of celebrity in transnational and local contexts, you will engage with notions of:

• intimacy and distance
• authenticity and performance
• intertextuality and emotion
• glamour and disgust
• labour and identity.

Module learning outcomes

• Systematically identify and comprehend key debates in celebrity and stardom studies.
• Critically evaluate primary materials in relation to debates in celebrity and stardom studies.
• Appreciate uncertainty and ambiguity of knowledge about celebrities.
• Develop and sustain arguments about the cultural politics of celebrity and stardom.
• Manage their own learning and research collaboratively and independently.
• Demonstrate advanced oral and visual presentation skills.