Madonna studies

For the Christian theological study of Mary, the mother of Jesus, see Mariology.
Madonna on stage at her Celebration tour in 2023

Madonna studies (also called Madonna scholarship, Madonna-ology or Madonna Phenomenon) refers to the study of the work and life of American singer-songwriter Madonna using an interdisciplinary approach incorporating cultural studies and media studies. In a general sense, it could refer to any academic studies devoted to her. After Madonna's debut in 1983, the discipline did not take long to start up and the field appeared in the mid-1980s, achieving its peak in the next decade. By this time, educator David Buckingham deemed her presence in academic circles as "a meteoric rise to academic canonisation". The rhetoric academic view of that time, majority in the sense of postmodernism, generally considered her as "the most significant artist of the late twentieth century" according to The Nation, thus she was understood variously and as a vehicle to open up issues. Into the 21st century, Madonna continued to receive academic attention.[a] At the height of its developments, authors of these academic writings were sometimes called "Madonna scholars" or "Madonnologists", and both E. Ann Kaplan and John Fiske were classified as precursors.

These studies analyzed several topics, but mostly Madonna studies involved in the study of gender, feminism, race, multiculturalism, sexuality, and the mass media. The wide-ranging resources used included her films, songs, live performances, books, interviews or her videos. National Geographic Society retrospectively called the field a "controversial" area in 2018; both Madonna studies and its authors received a variety of criticisms from academy and media outlets. Their proponents defended the field in almost equal measure. 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.

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