Transnational Stardom International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture

Thanks to the globalization of media, stars and celebrities are increasingly important figures in the transnational circulation of not only films but also ideas about identity and personhood. Combining a diverse range of case studies with an innovative collaborative discussion between leading scholars in star studies and transnational cinema, this book analyzes stars as sites of cross-cultural contestation. The contributors examine the phenomenon of global stardom as an important locus to help individualsbetter understand the construction of gender, race, nationality, and the individual as well as the importance of stars within transnational film industries. In a world in which cinema and its audiences are increasingly mobile, the essays in this collection explore how the plasticity of stars may help disparate peoples manage the shifting ideologies of a transnational world.

Russell Meeuf is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Idaho, USA. He is the author of Wayne's World: John Wayne and Transnational Masculinity in the Fifties. Raphael Raphael lectures at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA, and is also a private sector media specialist. His work on disability studies, film genre, and pedagogy appears in Teaching Film and Different Art: Disability across Media and the Arts (with Christopher Smit). He has also contributed to the Encyclopedia of American Disability History.