Kylie Minogue | The Symposium

Kylie Symposium
Friday, November 15, 2019 - 14:30 to Saturday, November 16, 2019 - 16:30
Iontas Building, North Campus, Maynooth University

Kylie Minogue is an international pop star, with over 80 million record sales worldwide. Her status as an audio-visual pop star, as a female singer with a capacity for reinvention, as well as a gay icon, celebrity, and cancer-survivor, marks out Minogue as a distinctive popular figure and invites critical appraisal. This international academic conference organised by Dr Stephen O’Neill, Maynooth University Department of English and Dr Antonio Cascelli and Dr Laura Watson, Maynooth University Department of Music, will explore the Australian pop star’s body of work from a range of approaches and academic disciplines including musicology, media studies, cultural studies, celebrity studies, and queer studies. The two-day international symposium, the first of its kind, brings together scholars and writers to explore Kylie as artist, as gay icon, as performer. Papers also address Minogue’s location in and negotiation of the contemporary music and culture industry, especially in relation to questions of age, voice and liveness.
 
The conference will be opened by his Excellency Mr Richard Andrews, Australian Ambassador to Ireland.
 
Keynote Speaker:
Dr Ruth Deller, Reader in Media and Communication, Sheffield Hallam University
 
Dr Deller looks at Kylie's 50th birthday last year and how it was covered in a whole range of different media, from TV to radio, newspapers to fashion magazines and, of course, on social media.  Coverage both promoted Kylie’s new album, Golden, and allowed audiences to bask in nostalgia, remembering the various phases of her career, from Charlene and PWL, through her indie phase, her gold hotpants revival and up to the present.  As a “national treasure” in the UK and Australia, there is always a lot of media interest in Kylie, and her 50th was not only a celebration for fans, but a great publicity opportunity for both Kylie and the various media that featured her.
 
 
Registration is free and open to the public here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/kylie-the-symposium-an-international-conference-at-maynooth-university-tickets-75480812141
 
For more information, visit the conference website: https://kyliethesymoposiummaynoothuni.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/about-the-symposium/