Archive for January 2019

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[Commlist] CFP 2019 Bridging Gaps: Re-Fashioning Stories for Celebrity Counterpublics

Thu Jan 17 13:17:10 GMT 2019




/The following international conference might be of interests to CSSA-FORUM members exploring contested narratives within and beyond Hollywood. Personal stories are welcome. Please share widely. Keynotes and publication updates will be announced shortly./*_
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*_NYC 2019 CMCS 8^th  International Conference_**
**/Bridging Gaps/**: Re-Fashioning Stories for Celebrity Counterpublics*

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Terrace Club at Club Quarters

25 W 51st St, across NBC & Rockefellar Centre
New York City, USA
August 30 – September 1, 2019

*_Call for Papers:_*


In the recent past, there has been an increased interest in exploring intersections of life writing and studies of celebrity culture. Storytelling is central to effective branding in fame. Furthermore, the use of biographical elements has been recognized as a rhetorical device in writing op-eds, personal essays, and public speaking that often raise awareness on critical issues in popular media. Biography, as Lola Romanucci-Ross points out, is mainly a useful symbolic tool for reflecting, rotating and reversing real-life situations. Like biography, autobiography, memoirs, and testimonials play crucial roles in mapping social facts.__

The impacts of glamorous forms of storytelling in scandals, gossip, and rumor become so crucial that they are often studied as sociological data, regardless of whether they enable actual social change. For pop culture enthusiasts and social observers, celebrities may or may not be actual role models in telling meaningful stories and constructing subjectivity. Yet, fans and students often invest affective and intellectual labor when it comes to accepting, negotiating or contesting what appears to be significant in understandings of popular figures. Celebrity scholars are equally familiar with the complexities of engaging with and researching “glossy topics”. As Sean Redmond (2014) has shown, acknowledging one’s own celebrity attachments can produce innovative ways of (re)writing fame. Conversely, these first-person accounts may also contribute to the celebritisation of individual academics. What is the critical and pedagogical potential of personal takes on fame within the field of celebrity studies?

Celebrity narratives are perceived to have real power whether or not celebrities are “important” people in the academic or moral sense. Drawing on current affairs, celebrity politicians have used personal claims and outrageous stories to push political agendas in divisive ways. Many other famous personas use extravagant fashion as expressions of their luxurious lives and build persona brands at the cost of ethics. For Elizabeth Wissinger, the “glamour labor” involved in self-fashioning, surveillance, and branding is often an inevitable and unfortunate outcome in the production of consumer values and desirable bodies in fashion industries. Public personas still self-fashion themselves and promote their brand by extending text(ures) of language that sells to consumer tastes. However, the challenge remains to sell the values of social justice. Can public intellectuals learn narrative strategies from celebrity storytelling and fill this gap?

What appears to be a shared reason behind the success of most popular narratives, verbal (including oral) and non-verbal, is a persuasive ‘strategy’ to effectively tell life stories. If studying celebrity biographies/autobiographies, best-selling memoirs, and other popular forms of life-writings and self-expressions carry cultural worth, then biographical elements of rising and celebrated public intellectuals, academics, critics, and activists are equally important to consider in disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices and understanding of fame. For instance, real-life first-hand accounts, such as testimonies and visual evidence, together with literary/artistic representations of gendered oppression provide meaning for progressive thinking and practice. Anecdotal accounts of famous sports personalities, actors, best-selling authors, and top models among other public figures are often useful rhetorical tools that help us to understand popular culture better. With this in mind, we need to extend popular storytelling beyond celebrity culture and persona branding, and use it to empower social change in academia, politics, and other spheres.

The Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies (CMCS) /Bridging Gaps/ conference series uses a reflective practice paradigm and asks an urgent question: Can we learn popular strategies and re-fashion celebrity stories into tools for public intellectualism and social transformation, in addition to studying them? What enables or disables the public to tell personal stories in studies and practices of celebrity culture? Can different forms of storytelling from the lives of rising and celebrated academics, public intellectuals, critics, and activists enable urgent social change? The conference problematizes what it means to be a popular “storyteller” and invites all academics, journalists, publicists, activists and models and guests to attend, collaborate and publish valuable and purposeful work around this key question and related topics in our conference.

The format of the conference aims at being open and inclusive of interdisciplinary academic scholars and practitioners involved in all areas of celebrity culture, fandom, fashion, and journalism.  The conference combines paper presentations, workshop panels, roundtables, slideshows, and interviews that aim to bridge gaps in celebrity activism, persona branding, and fashion education. Working papers, media productions, and personal stories will be considered for the conference.

Extended versions of selected best papers will be published in an edited collection.

*_Registration includes_*: Your printed package for the complete conference, professional development workshop, access to reception, complimentary evening drinks, consideration for publication, and the CMCS $100 best paper and $100 best screen awards.


*_Abstract Submission Guidelines_*:

•    250-word abstract or workshop / roundtable proposal

•    Include a title, your name, e-mail address, and affiliation if applicable

•    Submit abstract at (celebrity.mediastudies /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(celebrity.mediastudies /at/ gmail.com)>: *February 28, 2019*

•    Notification of acceptance:* March 31, 2019*

•    Early bird deadline for hotel & conference registration:* April 30, 2019*

•    Conference reception & presentations: *Friday, August 30 – Sunday, September 1, 2019*

*_Celebrity Chat video Submissions Guidelines_*:

•    Video length should be 10-20 minutes

•    Include a title, your name, e-mail address, and affiliation if applicable

•    Submit to Celebrity Chat producer Jackie Raphael at email

      address: (media.celebstudies /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(media.celebstudies /at/ gmail.com)>

•    Conference reception and presentations: *August 30 –September 1, 2019*

/Topics include but are not limited to:/

·Celebrity

·Fandom

·Audience

·Persona

·Life Writings

·Oral storytelling

·Fiction

·Fashion

·Photography

·Performance

·Publicity

·News

·Interviews

·Social Media

·Film and video

·Theory and Methods

·Research Agenda

·Business Models

·Ethics and Morality

·Media Literacy

·Education and Advocacy

·International Relations

·Community Building

·Business and Community Partnerships

*Conference Chair*: Dr Samita Nandy
*Conference Committee*: Dr Jackie Raphael, Kiera Obbard, Sabrina Moro, and Diana Miller

*Conference URL*: http://cmc-centre.com/conferences/nyc2019/
*Conference Twitter* @celeb_studies <http://www%2Ccmc-centre.com/celeb_studies> #CMCS19

Sponsors: Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies (CMCS) & ESI.CORE

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