Celebrity Women

Since the mid-1960s, scholars from history, media and cultural studies, and sociology have converged around the study of celebrity. The landmark 1961 book by historian Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, defined celebrity as a “human pseudo-event,” and later academics placed their discussions of celebrity culture within this context. Interest in the topic of celebrity emerged slowly, having its roots in literature that theorized about the Hollywood star system. Books on celebrity began to emerge in the 1990s, perhaps attributable to work in the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies where scholars were examining the relationship between audience use (or subversion) of commodities and the shaping of [Page 231]cultural ideologies. Two of the most frequently cited books include sociologist ...