Richards, Johanna (2021). Gender representations in the British media: a post feminist discourse analysis of celebrity academics and the neoliberal university. University of Birmingham. Ed.D.
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Richards2021EdD.pdf
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Abstract
This thesis is an investigation into the intersection between celebrity academia, gender and the neoliberal university. A new method of post -structuralist discourse analysis, which includes a post-feminist presentation of self, has been developed to interpret the new phenomenon of celebrity academics. Discourses in the media focus on the young, female body and transformation through aesthetic labour. The ‘academprenuer’, is a term I have created to describe a new, attractive, successful, academic, entrepreneurial woman. The academprenuer is individualistic, sexualised, young and undergoes transformation of her mind, through extended study, and her image, through aesthetic labour. By her celebrity status and image, academia is characterised as an individual endeavour for self-gain. Where Higher Education is commodified, celebrity academics help to market the ‘product’ through their glamour and the promise of meritocratic success. The academprenuer acts as a role model who perpetuates the myth that this kind of neoliberal, meritocratic, femininity is how academic woman are, which in turn supports the maintenance of gendered inequality. Older celebrity academic women, unlike older men, are notable by their absence and evidence of stigma exists for those older women who do appear in public life. Surveillance and the disciplinary gaze are prominent in media articles, journalists’ comments and social media trolling. Suggestions on how to challenge this and create a more diverse and inclusive representation of academic women, are offered. This is timely, so that academia can be claimed by women as a career of the mind allowing celebrity academic women to become wiser with age, rather than vanishing with the associated costs to careers.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ed.D.) | |||||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ed.D. | |||||||||
| Supervisor(s): |
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| Licence: | All rights reserved | |||||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Social Sciences | |||||||||
| School or Department: | School of Education, Department of Education and Social Justice | |||||||||
| Funders: | None/not applicable | |||||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/12195 |
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