From celebrity book clubs (Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, Dua Lipa, Emma Watson, etc.) to Sarah Jessica Parker’s role as judge of the prestigious Booker Prize 2025, celebrities have been shaping the contemporary literary field in unprecedented ways. How can we further our understanding of ‘celebrity book culture’? To underpin the seminar theoretically, we will be using concepts, terms, and ideas suggested by e. g. (cultural) sociologists Pierre Bourdieu, Clayton Childress, and James F. English, alongside recent work by scholars such as Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, Danielle Fuller, and Alexander Starre. With a distinct book studies approach, we will study ‘celebrity book culture’ alongside the books that celebrities have championed as gatekeepers of contemporary reading culture. Given the block format, we will be able to immerse ourselves within celebrity book culture for a week of theory, case studies, and spreadsheets.

Kurs im HIS-LSF