Superdon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 Briticism, and has no exact analogue in American English. The Teledon is a closely allied phenomenon.

1 Examples
2 In literature
3 Miscellaneous
4 See also

[edit] Examples

Many count Superdons as those who have appeared on TV repeatedly. On this basis the following could be considered:

A. J. P. 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 Germaine Greer (feminism)
Prof Robert Winston (human fertility)
Dr. David Starkey (famous for his Tudor period documentaries)
Carenza Lewis (through her work on Time Team)
Prof Stephen Hawking (many appearances to explain quantum mechanics)
Prof 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.
Prof Dan Cruickshank (a regular BBC TV historian of the 2000s including Around the World in 80 Treasures, often dons a Panama hat)
Mr Tom Paulin of Oxford University frequently appears in a high-cultural context on Television and Radio.

[edit] 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'.