[ecrea] Call for Papers: Liminal Celebrity and Small Nations- Special Issue of Celebrity Studies

*Call for Papers: Liminal Celebrity and Small Nations- Special Issue of 
Celebrity Studies*

Guest Editors:

Professor Barry King, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Dr Damion Sturm, Leeds Beckett University, UK

Research into celebrity tends to focus on larger and more powerful media 
systems and how the logic of mediated fame has been formed and developed 
in larger and more powerful nations. Considering that 60% of the world’s 
nations have populations of less than 10 million and 48% of nations have 
less than 5 million inhabitants, this issue seeks to explore the role, 
value and function of celebrity in such localities.

Historically the study of celebrity has followed the paths of 
organizational development and the cultural templates set by the success 
of Hollywood and the American media. Although significant differences in 
the formation of global and national celebrity culture are apparent in 
Europe (e.g., England, France, Italy) and other large and emerging 
global markets (e.g., China, India) these developments beg the question 
of the dynamics of celebrity in smaller nations. More explicitly, within 
such localities the formation of celebrity systems are subject to 
tensions between the global and the local. Drawing on the work of Victor 
Turner and Homi Bhabha, there is a need to explore the condition of 
inbetweenness and the liminal condition of local celebrity, charged with 
representing nationhood - itself internally conflicted and contested - 
and participation in the global celebrity order based on American and 
Western media systems. It could be argued that the national features of 
global celebrity, especially Hollywood and the American media, is 
rendered “invisible” as the universal touchstone of fame. Conversely, 
for the imagined communities of the periphery, celebrities are required 
to contend with notions of cultural specificity and traditions of 
representation and identity. So whilst it is true that the tension 
between the global and the local is a feature of celebrity culture per 
se, in small nation contexts this tends to be less a phenomenon between 
the ordinary and the extra-ordinary than between different versions of 
collective identity.

What are the specificities, nuances and complexities that underpin the 
development of celebrity in smaller nations? How do smaller nations 
respond to the the influence of global Hollywood as it interfaces with 
local traditions of prestige, performance and cultural identity? Do 
local “celebrity imaginaries” under pressure to gain the economic 
advantages of following global formats, essentially mirror and replicate 
globally powerful forms of celebrity? Alternatively, what are the 
differences, distinctions and cultural conflicts that emerge in the 
formation of such “glocal” celebrity systems? Does “liminal” celebrity 
germinate, operate and mobilise different logics of fame and moral 
economies of representation? Across a range of celebrity fields – in 
sport, entertainment and politics - how do localised nationalist 
discourses come to the fore and how do these play out in the logic of 
self-commodification and formation of personae? How do the factors of 
smaller market size and limited economies of scale enact a territorial 
or geographical compression on systems of value and prestige, geographic 
distance or isolation from the West structure the discourse of celebrity 
and the development and maintenance of liminal celebrity cultures?

In order to consider the interaction of the local and global (e.g., 
economic, political and cultural), as well as possible paradoxes and 
tensions in the formation of small nation celebrity, we welcome 
submissions that probe celebrity in any small nations located in Europe, 
Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania.

_Potential themes addressed may include but are not limited to:_

-The politics of celebrity in small nations

-The local and global dimensions to celebrity in small nations

-The role, value and/or significance of celebrity in small nations

-Celebrity identity politics via traditional (e.g., cultural, national, 
global, gender, race) and alternative articulations (e.g., abject, 
affect, agency, glocal, grobal, liquid, subversive)

-Cultural specificity and different versions of collective identity in 
small nation celebrity

-Celebrity in specific fields of fame, such as entertainment (film, 
television, sport, music), politics and public life

-Typologies of fame in small nations (e.g., notions of stardom, 
celebrity, persona, personage)

-Representational regimes and the burden of nationalistic articulations 
of celebrities as icons, heroes/heroines, and/or representatives of the 
nation (e.g., sport, media, politics)

-Everyday occurrences of small nation celebrity, micro-celebrity and 
‘ordinary’ celebrity

-Celebrity culture, commodification and gift economies

-Celebrity and Transgender performance traditions (e.g., in South East 
Asia, the Pacific Rim)

-Local traditions of performance in theatre, film and television, sport 
and politics in the formation of celebrity systems

-Historical treatment and/or contemporary case studies of celebrity

-The mediatisation and/or commodification of celebrities in small nation 
media

-The consumption of celebrity in small nations (i.e., fandom, gossip)

-The role of new media, social media and technology for celebrity in 
small nations

Interested authors should send a 250 word proposal and 200-word 
biography to both (barry.king /at/ aut.ac.nz) <mailto:(barry.king /at/ aut.ac.nz)> and 
(d.c.sturm /at/ leedsbeckett.ac.uk) <mailto:(d.c.sturm /at/ leedsbeckett.ac.uk)> by 
*October 21, 2016*. Acceptance notices will be sent out by December 9 
2016. For accepted proposals, completed essays of 6000-8000 words will 
be due no later than April 7, 2017. Final publication of the special 
issue is expected early 2018. Only previously unpublished essays will be 
considered.


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