Brenda Weber

Brenda Weber has a particular interest in how identity is discursively gendered, constructed, and embodied through written and mediated means, as well as how gender, sex, sexuality, race and class work together to inform notions of the “normative” self. She engages with a wide archive of mostly discredited cultural texts, including non-canonical 19th-century transatlantic women’s literature and contemporary media, specifically literature, film and television. Celebrity, masculinity and American religious cultures are important themes in her work.

Areas of Expertise

Television, film, age and aging, reality TV, American religions (Scientology, Mormonism), masculinity, bodies and body modification, popular culture, plastic surgery, beauty culture, body positivity, nineteenth-century women writers, celebrity studies.