Guy Davidson, University of Wollongong
Susan Sontag’s Impersonal Stardom 

To refer to the celebrity intellectual and author Susan Sontag as a “star” is a cliché of commentary on her, but in this paper I take the idea of Sontag’s stardom seriously, working with and against film star studies to develop an account of Sontag’s queer iconicity as it was fashioned during the mid-1960s, the period of her early fame. Through the queer allure of her much-photographed image and her ground-breaking 1960s essays, Sontag helped promote unorthodox sexual identities and attitudes, even as she avoided public association with the same-sexuality that was an important component of her private life.

Venue
MECO Seminar Room S226
John Woolley Building (A20)
The University of Sydney
Camperdown NSW