2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Presenters on this panel explore issues raised by the performances, embodiments, and promotions of celebrity figures who have served as lighting rods or come to stand in for feminist politics in popular media and visual culture in the last century.  Our interests range from an exploration of hegemonic accolades enjoyed by national figures such as Amelia Earhart to the consternation and even panic occasioned by the rise to fame of black women such as Angela Davis and Diahann Carroll, and beyond to include the complexities of the fandom that developed around figures such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. We are interested in the process as well consequences related to the historical production of these feminist icons in mass media venues and in the selection of those women presented as liberated role models—whether actual, fictional, or fictionalized and whether idolized or resisted by self-identified feminist activists and intellectuals. Presenters use an intersectional lens to explain how celebrity and iconization have served to shape public debate over specific issues within gender politics (both within and beyond the United States), have delimited public perceptions of feminist identity, and have generated gendered subject positions through their unique manipulation of race, sex, class, and nationalist discursive norms.