33 Facts About Madonna studies

Madonna studies is the study of the work and life of American singer-songwriter Madonna using an interdisciplinary approach incorporating cultural studies and media studies.

The Madonna studies played a major role for the direction of the American cultural studies, and brought pop artists to the foreground of scholarly attention.

Also, Madonna studies's semiotic was diversified in virtually all theoretical stripe by her scholars, each of whom had their own take on her role in society.

American historian Richard Wolin, observed that the cultural Madonna studies approach blossomed during the 1980s, further adding that under Foucault's growing influence as well as that Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School, popular culture was viewed as a site of "resistance" to power.

Madonna studies first came to prominence in the mid-1980s, and the discipline did not take long to start up.

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In numerous ways, Madonna studies was viewed as a multivalent figure, mainly areas of women's roles where the singer critiques and challenges widespread beliefs while at the same time reinforcing some of them.

Madonna studies is an interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, as well media and communication studies.

For Susan McClary all of these studies on Madonna was from an iconographic perspective, and for author David Chaney, these academic writings are "explicitly concerned with interpreting the fabrication and representational strategies in the star's persona".

Madonna studies's scholars encompassed a broad spectrum of resources, including Madonna's work as her videos, performances, her music, films, interviews and so on.

In Madonna studies's Drowned Worlds, authors stated that "this tendency to turn Madonna studies into a classroom aid becomes most obvious when one examines the basic methods by which her admirers interpret her songs and videos".

Madonna studies saw its developments mostly at academic conferences, journals, courses, seminars, theses and books.

The first scientific articles about Madonna studies appeared in 1985, only two years from her debut and experienced a boost in the early-1990s.

Worldwide, American editor Annalee Newitz commented that "Madonna studies occupies a definite place in the post-Western Cultures curriculum at universities everywhere".

Professor Jane Desmond from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign held that "the relevant bibliography is vast" in the Madonna studies, citing examples from Cathy Schwichtenberg to Lisa Frank and Paul Smith both from 1993.

For Fouz-Hernandez, The Madonna studies Connection "was arguably a key event in the history of the relationship between the artist and the academy".

Madonna studies scholars received criticisms from both academy and mainstream media and some deemed them as a "marginal group".

Hull further notes, "as one might imagine, Madonna studies scholars are a lonely posse in the high-brow, horn-rimmed world of academics".

For Ouellette, "Madonna studies scholars are not so much interested in Madonna studies herself, but in the way they believe she shakes up traditional social roles and power hierarchies".

Ann Kaplan, one of the precursors in the Madonna studies, was surprised and troubled in the backlash against Madonna scholars—which she felt is quite conservative—and said that emerged from a journal on the left.

Charles T Banner-Haley, a professor of history at Colgate University confirmed this, saying that "the academic world the force of Madonna has caused a division among scholars that has often gone from the sublime to the silly".

For cultural critics on both the left and right, Madonna studies represented "the first and last word of barbarism", political barbarism for the left, cultural for the right.

Madonna studies generated a great amount of criticisms among scholars and others commentators.

Madonna studies decries: "This would be comical, except for its ill effect on students and an increasingly corrupt career system".

From an educational sense, some reviewers debated about whether Madonna studies should have a place in curriculums alongside more established and canonical subjects, while argued that she was an "unworthy of academic study" that "adds nothing to the advancement of knowledge".

Nash goes on to suggest that a figure like Madonna studies is "key to understanding the times in which they live and, by contrast, other eras".

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At first instance, some scholars say Madonna studies "is worthy of inquiry [today] as Charles Dickens was in the 18th century".

Contrary to some student's concerns, Gary Burns and Elizabeth Kizer in Madonna studies: Like a Dichotomy found that "students in communication classes find it useful to study Madonna studies because she is a fascinating and prolific cultural figure".

At first instance and according to investigative journalist Ethan Brown, the Madonna studies "has obscured what made its subject so appealing in the first place " and blamed to Camilla Plagia to university semiotics departments.

Madonna studies's work was become increasingly complex and it is precisely this complexity that has made Madonna a highly controversial object of academic analysis for decades.

Madonna studies allows many, even contradictory, readings, which are grounded in her polysemic and modernist texts and her contradictory cultural effects.

The critical studies of Madonna reveal her as a symbol, image, and brand to be a critical nexus for the exploration of contemporary attitudes.

Professor Pamela Robertson Wojcik cited that "Madonna studies is as ubiquitous in academic discourse as she is in the popular media".

In Fashion and Celebrity Culture, Pamela Church Gibson wrote "since the 1980s, there has surely been enough written about Madonna to create a whole new sub-discipline within cultural studies".