Call for Papers – Starring Asia: A Three-Day International Conference on Asian Stardom and Celebrity, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, December 2-4, 2019

In this three-day conference, the varied ways through which stardom and celebrity emerges in and across Asia will be explored. We understand Asia as a geographical location and a geopolitical set of interfaces, both interconnected and divided by a number of distinct National imaginaries and transnational vectors. Stardom and celebrity is understood to be a central part of the Asian attention economy; wrapped up in questions of representation and identity, democratic and demotic articulations; and utilised in various nationalist and transnational discourses. The relationship between binaries, core and periphery, major and minoritarian cultural forms will also be addressed. The questions that energise this call for papers are:

What does stardom and celebrity mean in Asian regions? How has it been conceptualized?

What impressions, economies and desires does it elicit? What problems and concerns does it provoke?

What is its complex, diverse and multifarious relationship to Western experiences and practices, and global celebrity culture more generally?

Alongside the conference will be a free public screening event which will include the showing of four seminal ‘star vehicle’ films: from China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Each film will be introduced by a leading screen expert and will be followed by an industrial panel with leading star figures from those industries.

Topics to be addressed, complicated and critiqued could include:

• Theorizing Stardom and Celebrity in Asian regions – textual and contextual approaches and provocations
• National star and celebrity case studies
• Digital Asian celebrity cultures
•  Asian political celebrity
•  Asian star and celebrity fandom
•  Asian global care ambassadors
•  Do-good Asian stars
•  Marketing Asian stardom and celebrity
•  Online Asian celebrity
•  Attention economies
• Regulating desire – patriarchy, sexuality, religion
• Asian star brands
• The Asian celebrity influencer
• DIY Asian celebrity
• East to the West, the West to the East: transnational star passing
• Race and ethnicity in the Asian star and celebrity context
• Asian pop stars and belonging
• Asian star and celebrity aesthetics
• National and nationalist star Asian bodies
• Empirical research on Asian stars and celebrities
• Trans-Asian pop stars and fandom
• Queer and transgendered Asian celebrities
• Asian celebrity-turned-activists
• Asian celebrities and public diplomacy

150-250 word abstracts for individual paper presentations or 750 word pre-constituted panel abstracts should be sent as a Word document to s.redmond@deakin.edu.au by 5 May 2019

A selection of the best conference papers will be published in a confirmed Special Edition of Celebrity Studies in 2021

For enquiries, please contact any of the organisation committee members:

Glen Donnar glen.donnar@rmit.edu.au

Shenshen Cai scai@swin.edu.au

Jian Xu j.xu@deakin.edu.au