Susan Sontag

Writer and cultural critic (1933-2004)

Susan Sontag was a rare figure: a critic who became a cultural celebrity. Born in 1933 in New York City but raised primarily in Los Angeles, Sontag was educated at a number of esteemed institutions including the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and, for a short time, the University of...

Susan Sontag was a rare figure: a critic who became a cultural celebrity. Born in 1933 in New York City but raised primarily in Los Angeles, Sontag was educated at a number of esteemed institutions including the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and, for a short time, the University of Oxford. She embodied intellectual curiosity and her fame, though relatively unconventional, wasn’t inexplicable: Her philosophical and authoritative approach to mainstream topics made for unique and captivating perspectives. 
Seminal essays such as 1964’s “Notes on ‘Camp’”reframed cultural conversations around aesthetics, while Sontag’s books On Photography and Illness as Metaphor — written after she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer in the mid-1970s — challenged entrenched ideas about representation, illness, and identity. Sontag’s writing also transcended genres — her 1999 novel In America won a National Book Award for Fiction. Sontag died in 2004 at the age of 71.