Why and how did the modern celebrity emerge in the early nineteenth century? What can we learn about the formation and policing of specific categories of identity from the oftentimes idiosyncratic and iconoclastic construction of Adah Isaacs Menken, one of the earliest celebrity personas? This talk will employ visual studies and historical methodologies to explore the stakes and dimensions of decoding difference in the nineteenth-century United States.
Amy Lippert is Assistant Professor of American History and the College at the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching focus on the cultural and social history of the United States in the 19th century, with a special interest in the mass production, consumption, and popular interaction with visual imagery and problems of perception. Her first book, Consuming Identities (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines visual culture and celebrity in nineteenth century San
Francisco. Dr. Lippert received her BA, MA, and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley.
