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Jewish Stardom: Celebrity and Fandom

Leo Braudy, Rhonda Lieberman, and David Margolick in conversation with Jeffrey Shandler
APRIL 22, 2007 1:15 PM
MACGOWAN LITTLE THEATER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

Over the course of the past century, Jewish celebrities have become fixtures of American popular culture, and their presence on the national scene has become an important, at times provocative component of American Jewish life—indeed, inventorying famous Jews has become a defining pastime for many of this country's Jews. This panel will consider the varied ways that celebrities engage with (and sometimes disengage from) their Jewishness in the public sphere and will ponder what it means to be a Jewish fan.

LEO BRAUDY is a professor of English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. He is the co-editor of Great Film Directors and Film Theory and Criticism. His books include The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History; The World in a Frame; Jean Renoir; and a volume in the British Film Institute's Film Classics series about Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront.

RHONDA LIEBERMAN is a Contributing Editor of Artforum, a Visiting Critic at the Yale School of Art, and a self-appointed Jew-ologist. Her essays appear in Bookforum and T:Style magazine (The New York Times). Her art has appeared at The Jewish Museum, New York, in "Too Jewish?" and "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting."

DAVID MARGOLICK is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he has worked since 1996. Prior to coming to Vanity Fair, he was the National Legal Affairs Editor at The New York Times, where he wrote the weekly "At the Bar" column. Margolick is the author of four books, including Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song.

JEFFREY SHANDLER is Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture and While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust. He is the co-author/co-editor (with J. Hoberman) of Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting.

David Margolick photo © Elena Seibert