Identity Through the Ages: Fame, Mass Media and the Modern Celebrity

Course Description

Long before movies and social media, heroes, warriors and rulers achieved legendary status through myths, monuments, and oral storytelling. From Roman gladiators to YouTube stars, celebrity as a concept has evolved alongside every major communication revolution. This five-day interdisciplinary course will focus on fame and celebrity as concepts relevant to individual and cultural identity, and follow the evolution through history, from ancient legends to TikTok influencers. The course will facilitate a critical analysis of how societies use fame to express values, ambitions, and anxieties, and how media technologies amplify or reshape those ideals.

Beginning with the earliest forms of fame, the course will interrogate how saints, gladiators, emperors, monarchs and other figures were turned into icons within their own societies. To reflect on the larger history of mass media, students will focus on the printing press’s transformative impact, illustrating its role in the development of early mass communication between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students will examine the critical role of technology in producing and sustaining fame, whether through ancient art, coins, and stories, fame operated as a tool to both entertain and control.

Focused on fame as a historical concept, the course will demonstrate how writers, actors, and political leaders became early modern celebrities through portraits, pamphlets, and newspapers. By positioning celebrity not as a modern obsession but instead, as a mirror of human history, the course will demonstrate specific mechanisms introduced through its development in the twentieth century, mass media (film, photography and radio) revolutionized fame by introducing a new kind of star in the movie icon and later, the television star. By investigating how technology, storytelling, and culture continually change, students will develop a more comprehensive understanding of conceptual ideas like identity. Students will explore the characteristics of the Industrial Revolution that created the foundation for modern celebrity culture and turned fame into a commodity, specifically determining how the printing press connects these ancient traditions to practices in Hollywood, television, and digital media.

After demonstrating the various roles played by studios, publicists, fan magazines and gossip columns in turning private lives into public entertainment, students will attend to the shifting relationship between image, performance, and media influence. In the digital era, fame has become more personal—and more complicated. The course examines how reality television, YouTube, and social media blurred the lines between celebrity and everyday life, specifically leading students through discussions to analyze how online fame is built through algorithms, authenticity, and constant engagement, and they debate contemporary issues.