Fame—celebrity, notoriety, renown—confers both recognition and immortality.
It is the most enduring and desirable form of social power; a uniquely
human ambition and a central force in social life. Culture, commerce,
politics, and religion all proffer promises of fame, whether for fifteen
minutes or fifteen centuries. Drawing on texts from history, anthropology,
sociology, literature, philosophy, and contemporary media, this course
will reflect on the ethics, erotics, pragmatics and pathologies of fame. We
will compare fame to other forms of recognition (reputation, honor,
charisma, infamy, etc.), and look at how fame operates in various social
and historical circumstances, from small agricultural communities to
enormous, hyper-mediated societies such as our own. How does the fame of
the oral epic differ from the fame of the printed book or the fame of the
photograph? We'll consider the enduring question of fame as it transforms
across space, time, social boundaries, and technological conditions.
