I'm circulating this on behalf of a friend. For more information or
questions, please contact Andrew Scahill at adscahill_at_mail.utexas.edu
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Call for Papers: The Velvet Light Trap, Issue #65, Spring 2010 – Celebrity!
Stars are dead! Long live … celebrity?! It has been nearly two decades since
Richard Dyer’s influential Stars reinvented our theoretical approaches to
film stardom. In his text, Dyer interrogated the social meanings we attach
to screen icons and demonstrated how those meanings contribute to our
understanding of ourselves and others. While his project remains central to
star studies today, its exclusive focus on Hollywood stands at odds with a
media environment in which the cinema’s role in circulating the star image
has been increasingly marginalized. In the years since Dyer’s original
publication, we have witnessed the emergence of a global paparazzi culture
that revels in the conflation between traditional notions of stardom and a
more ambiguous obsession with “fame” for fame’s sake. It is time to
investigate this awkward tension and consider the ramifications it holds for
the field of star studies. Does our current celebrity culture amount to a
new epoch in the evolution of “the star” or is it simply more of the same?
Issue #65 of The Velvet Light Trap will explore our contemporary
understandings of “celebrity.” While the editors maintain a very broad
definition of this phenomenon, special attention will be given to
contributions that consider celebrity’s present manifestations in tabloid
culture, online gossip, and scandal or rethink previous engagements with
stardom from fresh perspectives. Whether papers approach celebrity as a
discursive category, a commercial commodity, and/or an object of
consumption, the editors anticipate submissions that connect these
strategies to the historical, industrial, political, and cultural impetuses
that underpin a society’s values.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Coming to “terms” with “stardom” and “celebrity”
• Race, nation, class, gender, sexuality, and celebrity
• Transnationalism and celebrity
• Post-race ideology and celebrity
• Athletics and celebrity
• Spectacle and celebrity
• Politics and celebrity
• Fandom, fan production, and celebrity
• Celebrity weddings
• Celebrity death
• Celebrity children
• Celebrity adoptions
• Celebrity news (e.g. TMZ, E!)
• Tabloid culture
• Online gossip
• Scandal and infamy
• Reality television, aka “Celebreality”
• Sex tapes
• Paparazzi
Papers should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words (approximately 20-25 pages
double-spaced), in MLA style with a cover page including the writer's name
and contact information. Please send four copies of the paper (including a
one-page abstract with each copy) in a format suitable to be sent to a
reader anonymously. The journal's Editorial Advisory Board will referee all
submissions.
For more information or questions, contact Andrew Scahill at
adscahill_at_mail.utexas.edu. Submissions are due January 30, 2009, and
should be sent to:
The Velvet Light Trap, c/o The Department of Radio-Television-Film,
University of Texas at Austin, CMA 6.118, Mail Code A0800, Austin, TX, 78712
The Velvet Light Trap is an academic, peer-reviewed journal of film and
television studies. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
and the University of Texas-Austin alternately coordinate issues. The
Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Charlie Keil, Dan
Marcus, David Desser, David Foster, Michele Malach, Joe McElhaney, Bambi
Haggins, Jason Mittell, Malcolm Turvey, Nina Martin, James Morrison, Karla
Oeler, Tara McPherson, Steve Neale, Aswin Punathambekar, Peter Bloom, Sean
Griffin, and Michael Williams.
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