Celebrity masculinities

Famous controversial personalities including Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and David Beckham will feature in the next GenSex seminar on celebrity masculinities.

The session on 23rd November will cover the Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal of 1998-9 which changed the face of American politics and it will also explore images of David Beckham in both fine art and popular culture and the responses they have attracted. It's free to attend and takes place in B1O3 (Business School), from 12 noon to 2pm.

Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edge Hill, and Chair of GenSex (EHU's Gender and Sexuality Research Group) said: "I'm always looking for new ways to give creative perspectives on gender and sexuality and these two speakers give a real insight into the world of celebrity masculinities. We're all too aware of the scandals surrounding the private lives of these famous names, but the academic study of their lives and stories helps us to read their experiences in terms of wider global gender politics."

Dr Robert Busby, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Liverpool Hope University, will present a paper entitled "That Woman": Clinton, Lewinsky and contemporary sex scandals, which highlights the changing nature of the investigation, prosecution of, and presentation of a contemporary sex scandal in American politics. He will explore the darker implications of the strategies employed by the Clinton White House to deal with the scandal, showing how that strategy cast the President as the victim of an unjust intrusion into his private life rather than the perpetrator of actions which potentially destabilised the credibility of the office he held.  Dr Busby will argue, ultimately, that the Clinton/Lewinsky case proved that sexual scandal is no longer an issue which creates adverse public opinion or impact upon the working lives of political men.

Dr Busby has published in the fields of political scandal, political communication and populism. He is currently researching the resurgence of populism in the United States.

Dr Amelia Yeates, Lecturer in Art History at Liverpool Hope University, will consider the visual power of one of the UK's most notorious sportsmen in her paper: David Beckham and queered contemporary masculinities. She will offer a theorised narrative of visual pleasure as part of her exploration of how and why Beckham has created and sustained his status as a heteronormative masculine icon despite his continued appearance in homoerotic contexts. Her paper will consider what ‘homo-friendly' images of Beckham mean for contemporary masculinities, and the degree to which they represent a challenge to hegemonic masculinity. 

Dr Yeates' research interests are gender in fine art, popular culture and literature across the 19^th and 20^th centuries. She is concerned with representations of masculinity during these periods and is currently co-editing a volume entitled Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities. Her work on Beckham grows out of an interest in contemporary masculinities, particularly at their intersection with visual and popular culture. 

For further information on the 2011-12 GenSex programme or on this event contact Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards on edwardsm@edgehill.ac.uk