Superdon
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A Superdon (or celebrity don) is an academic who repeatedly appears in television documentaries. The term is a portmanteau combining Superman and University Don. The term is a Britishism, and has no exact analogue in American English. The Teledon is a closely allied phenomenon.
Examples
Many count Superdons as those who have appeared on TV repeatedly. On this basis the following could be considered:
- AJP Taylor (Oxford historian well-known for unscripted talks - perhaps the first superdon)
- Prof Richard Holmes (Specialist on battlefields, and acclaimed Churchillian)
- Prof Richard Dawkins (ethologist)
- Prof Niall Ferguson (historian)
- Prof Robert Winston (human fertility)
- Dr.David Starkey (famous for his Tudor period documentaries)
- Carenza Lewis (through her work on Time Team)
- Stephen Hawking (many appearances to explain quantum mechanics)
- Simon Schama (famous for his A History of Britain TV series, and also because of his revisionist look at Anglo-American slavery in Rough Crossings)
- Francis Pryor (for his work on Anglo-saxon sites and Time Team)
- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, for Millennium, his upper-class voice and dandy like appearance on screen.
In literature
- Kingsley Amis' satires on University life makes reference to the phenomenon, but not by name, where lecturers seek fame to hold on to their positions and to try and achieve tenure.
- 'Howard Kirk' was a fictional history 'superdon' created by Malcolm Bradbury
- In the Da Vinci Code, the protagonist, Robert Langdon, could be considered a misguided 'superdon'.
Miscellaneous
- Andrew Marr mentions the cult of the Superdon as indicative of our love of celebrity in his book My Trade
- A famous graffito in the toilets of the University of East Anglia gives this following joke about Malcolm Bradbury, (a creator of superdons who became one himself);
- (Q)What is the difference between God and Professor Bradbury?
- (A)God is everywhere, Professor Bradbury is everywhere but here
See also
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