June 1 marks Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday. Despite her death in 1962, Monroe remains an icon of American pop culture.
Amanda Konkle, Ph.D., researches film history, stardom and celebrity prominence. Konkle is an expert in Monroe’s rise to fame and her lasting relevance in modern style. She published the book “Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe,” along with several research papers detailing Monroe’s unique status in American history.
Konkle can speak to how Monroe connected with audiences during her life by creating a new ideal of feminine power that defined an era. She can explore how Monroe’s acting methods mirrored society’s anxieties and desires, and why they still resonate today.
Konkle is available virtually or for in-person interviews at the Armstrong Campus. Simply contact Georgia Southern's Director of Communications Jennifer Wise at jwise@georgiasouthern.edu to arrange an interview today.
Media
Social
Biography
Prof. Konkle teaches and researches in the areas of film history, stardom and celebrity studies, performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, adaptation studies, the Hollywood production code, and television studies.
Areas of Expertise
Film History
Film Theory, Genre, and Censorship
Adaptation Studies
Television Studies
Gender and Cultural Studies
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Literature
Accomplishments
College of Arts and Humanities Research Impact Initiative fund
2026 Georgia Southern University
College of Arts and Humanities Award for Excellence in Collaboration
2026 Georgia Southern University
Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship
2025 Norman Mailer Fund
College of Arts and Humanities Award for Excellence in Research
2023 Georgia Southern University
Governor’s Teaching Fellow
2023-2024 Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education, University of Georgia
Why does Marilyn Monroe still define the 'Ideal Woman'?
FRANCE 24 English tv
2026-06-19
As we mark 100 years since her birth, the enduring legacy of Marilyn Monroe means she still shapes ideas of what makes an ideal woman. Annette Young talks to Professor Amanda Konkle, a film specialist, as to why this is the case.
A century after her birth, Marilyn Monroe remains a cultural icon
WTOC 11 tv
2026-05-30
Amanda Konkle, an English and Film Studies professor at Georgia Southern University, said Monroe’s popularity has sometimes been reduced to a simplified image over time.
“It’s sad,” longtime Netflix DVD subscriber Amanda Konkle said today as she waited the arrival for her final disc, “The Nightcomers,” a 1971 British horror film featuring Marlon Brando. “It makes me feel nostalgic. Getting these DVDs has been part of my routine for decades.”
Marilyn shines in her most celebrated comedy yet, Some Like It Hot. In the weeks before her death, Marilyn is on the cusp of a new and exciting future, making front pages with her skinny dip portraits and securing a triumphant new deal with 20th Century Fox.
“When you open your mailbox, it’s still something you actually want instead of just bills,” Amanda Konkle, who has been subscribing to Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service since 2005, told the AP.
How fictional biopic Blonde turns Marilyn Monroe into a symbol of celebrity tragedy
CBC News online
2022-09-29
The myth of Marilyn Monroe has changed drastically in the years since she died, according to Amanda Konkle, the author of Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe and an associate professor at Georgia Southern University.
‘Shall I Be Her?’: Marilyn Monroe’s Transition into a 21 st Century Character
March 2026 | Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference Chicago, IL
Collaborating on Stardom: Dual Actress Portrayals of Marilyn Monroe
February 2026 | Adaptation and Collaboration: Joint Conference of the Literature/Film Association and the Association for Adaptation Studies Virtual
The Absent Presence of Marilyn Monroe in Conspiracy Narratives
September 2025 | Literature/Film Association Conference Savannah, GA
Articles
Barbie: A Twenty-First Century Star Vehicle
Barbenheimer Syndrome: The Creation of Cultural Spectacle at the Box Office
2026
Near the end of Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film Barbie, Gloria (America Ferrera) delivers an impassioned speech about what it means to be a woman in the Real World to deprogram the Barbies who have been coerced into subjugation by newly patriarchal Kens. She concludes,“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.” Critics have argued both for and against the film’s feminism, its embrace of capitalism, its status as a nearly two-hour Barbie commercial, and whether its box-office success is justified. The Barbie film proves to be just as controversial and contradictory as the doll herself, an adaptation of a sex toy, alternately accused of destroying girls’ confidence and lauded for helping (white) girls envision futures beyond motherhood. Like Barbie, the doll, Barbie, the movie, and the producer and star Margot Robbie, the director and co-writer Greta Gerwig, the cast of Barbies and Kens, and real girls, it turns out, all ironically end up facing the same issue Gloria decries.
Depicting a 21st-Century Crime Family: The Murdaugh Multiverse
Televising True Crime in the Digital Age: Critical Feminist Perspectives
2026
In February 2023, the day before Alex Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense in the trial for the 2021 murders of his wife and son, Netflix released a docuseries on the family, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal. This docuseries is one of many media investigations of the powerful Murdaugh family contributing to what this chapter names “the Murdaugh multiverse.” This chapter analyzes the melodramatic themes that appear across texts in the Murdaugh multiverse to argue that this saga appeals to audiences because it dramatizes how the justice system gives “little people” the power to convict a local power player. Within a cultural context where white-collar crime is rarely punished, Murdaugh's schemes have publicly unraveled and the justice system has held him accountable.
Ida Lupino: Multifaceted performer and cinematic pioneer
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
2026
Gillian Kelly’s comprehensive study of Ida Lupino combats common misconceptions and ‘misremember [ings]’(p. 228) regarding Lupino’s career, including her association only with film noir. With a focus on Lupino’s performance style and gestures, her directorial work, and her complex and contradictory star persona, Kelly provides a comprehensive analysis of Lupino’s robust career: onscreen, behind the camera, in mainstream Hollywood films and in independent productions, on radio and television programs, and in advertisements. Kelly also builds on her own previous work to analyse Lupino as what she calls a ‘performing auteur’or ‘star as auteur’(p. 13).
Spotlight: Performance and Stardom Scholarly Interest Group
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
2026
As Paul McDonald writes, film stars "have cultural significance because through their on-screen performances they represent meanings about human identity." McDonald underscores the relationship between screen acting and celebrity culture that informs the Performance and Stardom Scholarly Interest Group (SIG). Our SIG focuses on performance studies rather than performativity, keeping in mind that anyone can act. But acting, especially for screen media, differs from other kinds of performing. To that end, a group of scholars with ongoing research profiles in the fields of performance and stardom studies gathered together in 2021 to organize a SIG that would help bring structured cohesion to an area of media studies that had been undergoing rapid growth since the so-called performative turn of the 1990s.
Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Method Acting: Between Art and Commerce
The Routledge Companion to American Film History
2025
Method acting is perhaps the best known and most misunderstood acting style. This confusion stems from the style's origins in mid-century America. Although many acting practitioners interpreted the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavsky differently, Lee Strasberg's approach, the Method, became the most famous interpretation. Strasberg courted Hollywood actors to increase the public profile of the acting style and fundraise for the Actors Studio in New York. This chapter discusses the training and performance styles of two of these Hollywood actors: Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. Brando studied at the Actors Studio prior to acting in Hollywood, but he preferred teacher Stella Adler's approach, referred to as “modern acting,” over Strasberg and his Method.
Bio-adaptation or necro-adaptation? Three versions of Blonde
Adaptation
2025
Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022) is one of many fictional biopics of Marilyn Monroe and an adaptation of both Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 novel and Joyce Chopra's 2001 miniseries of the same name. Dominik's version is unique in that it is not focused on Monroe's life but rather makes her death the defining moment in her story; this film is not a bio-adaptation but a necro-adaptation. This analysis applies Michele Aaron's concept of necroromanticism and Laura Mulvey's articulation of the death-drive narrative structure to demonstrate that death drives Dominik's narrative about Monroe, betraying his effort to strip her of her voice and agency. In contrast, Oates's novel and Chopra's miniseries focus on Monroe's vitality, constituting bio-adaptations.
Woke women of the 90s return: Toxic white feminism and the Murphy Brown and Roseanne reboots
The Journal of Popular Culture
2025
Two feminist icons of the 1990s returned to network television in 2018: Murphy Brown and Roseanne Conner. Neither rebooted character survived the reboot's first season. Despite their attempts to demonstrate that they were “woke,” the acting styles and strong personas of these two icons were, this paper argues, not appealing to a younger generation of television viewers and feminists and, simultaneously, too progressive for the older and more conventional audiences of the networks on which they aired. Moreover, both leading characters demonstrated the narrowmindedness associated with a toxic white feminism that overlooks issues of class and race.
Bio-adaptation or necro-adaptation? Three versions of Blonde
Adaptation
2025
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde (2022) is one of many fictional biopics of Marilyn Monroe and an adaptation of both Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel and Joyce Chopra’s 2001 miniseries of the same name. Dominik’s version is unique in that it is not focused on Monroe’s life but rather makes her death the defining moment in her story; this film is not a bio-adaptation but a necro-adaptation. This analysis applies Michele Aaron’s concept of necroromanticism and Laura Mulvey’s articulation of the death-drive narrative structure to demonstrate that death drives Dominik’s narrative about Monroe, betraying his effort to strip her of her voice and agency. In contrast, Oates’s novel and Chopra’s miniseries focus on Monroe’s vitality, constituting bio-adaptations.
Specifications for Success?: Experiments with Minimizing Grades at a Regional Public University
The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
2025
Today’s university students face many challenges, including mental health crises and competing demands on their time. My classes at Georgia Southern University, a regional R2 with three campuses and a growing online population, consist of a diverse student population which includes first-generation and returning learners. Over the past few years, I have noticed increased anxiety around grades and more students choosing which assignments to complete because work and family obligations prevent them from devoting equal time and attention to each course. While I could ignore the student mental health crisis or lament learners’ failure to prioritize my courses, I choose instead to shift my pedagogy and assessment practices in ways that potentially foster each student’s success despite their circumstances.
