‘Rock Stardom and Listening’ Lecture at AUB

CASAR cordially invites you to a lecture titled: ‘Rock Stardom and Listening’ by David Shumway.

David R. Shumway is Professor of English, and Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University where he has taught courses in film, literature, and cultural studies since 1985. He is founding Director of the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon, and is Treasurer of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. He served as the first president of the Cultural Studies Association, and he was president of the Midwest Modern Language Association. He has written Michel Foucault (1989), Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline (1994), Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis (2003), John Sayles, for the Illinois Contemporary Film Directors Series (2012), and Rock Star: The Making of Musical Icons from Elvis to Springsteen, published in 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press. He has co-edited Knowledges: Critical and Historical Studies in Disciplinarity (1993), Making and Selling Culture (1996), and Disciplining English (2002). He is working on a book on realism across media.

My Book Rock Star
The Making of Cultural Icons from Elvis to Springsteen investigates rock stars, the successors to the movie stars of an earlier era, as political figures, icons of cultural change–though not always progressive–whose public personas I read as collaboratively produced texts. But the age of the rock star seems to be behind us, as a fragmented mediascape, declining sales, and the rise of the downloaded track mean that the broad reach these star once had is no longer possible. While this may enable more different musicians to be heard, it will make them less listened to because stardom is one condition of listening that encouraged attention and repetition.

Location: Building 37 – Conference A