A one-day symposium supported by the TORCH Celebrity Research Network, with the Austrian Science Fund, that will take place at the Radcliffe Humanities Building on Saturday, 5 March 2016, 10am-6pm

In line with a long literary tradition of the artist as propagandist, who strives to appeal to the political, moral, and social conscience of his/her readership, writers have persistently crossed the divide between art and politics both in their works and in their roles as public intellectuals, cultural critics, and political activists. Moreover, established authors have, with striking regularity, taken advantage of their celebrity status in order to draw attention to specific socio-political agendas, thus demonstrating the convertibility of their ‘celebrity capital’. The papers in this symposium will address the complex interplay of authorship, politics, and fame/celebrity within an Anglophone cultural context, with case studies ranging from the 16th century to the present. They will focus on Oscar Wilde, Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, Salman Rushdie, JM Coetzee and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others, and cover a broad spectrum of themes, including literary celebrity and the politics of class, gender, and race; the tension between authorial self-fashioning and media appropriation; and the dual commitment to art and action of writers in political office.

The event will include a roundtable discussion with Elleke Boehmer, Peter D McDonald, Caroline Davis, and Olivier Driessens, with research papers by Michelle Kelly, Sandra Mayer, Kate McLoughlin, Matthew Lecznar, Kate De Rycker, Simon Morgan, Michèle Mendelssohn, and Adam Perchard.

A programme, abstracts, and speaker information are available on the TORCH event website:

www.torch.ox.ac.uk/art-action-intersections-literary-celebrity-and-politics

Registration is free and open to all, but please email Sandra Mayer (sandra.mayer@univie.ac.at) to guarantee your place.