Childhood and Celebrity

Jane O’Connor is a Reader in Childhood Studies at Birmingham City University where she leads the ‘Rethinking Childhood’ research cluster. She is the author of The Cultural Significance of the Child Star (2008) and has written extensively in the areas of representations of childhood and children and the media. John Mercer is Professor of Gender and Sexuality at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. His research interests include the cultural construction of masculinities, celebrity and stardom, and the sexualisation of contemporary media culture. He is the author of Rock Hudson: Star Studies (2015) and (with Martin Shingler) of Melodrama: Genre Style Sensibility. John is co-editor of the Journal of Gender Studies and an editorial board member of Celebrity Studies.

Introduction – Jane O’Connor and John Mercer






Childhood and celebrity: mapping the terrain – Jane O’Connor
Section A: Childhood vs child celebrity




Child beauty pageants in the second gilded age – Henry A. Giroux



Born to be famous? Children of celebrities and their rights in the media – Ana Jorge and Lidia Maropo



‘Just a voice and youth’: Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland and the rise of the musical child star in the 1930s – Ciara Barrett



Bollywood's periphery: child stars and representations of childhood in Hindi films - Shakuntala Banaji
Section B: Post childhood celebrity – the transition to adulthood




Blossoming beauty or unhinged teen? Media and audiences discussing celebrities coming of age – Hilde van den Bulck, Nathalie Claessens and Annebeth Bels



Miley Cyrus and the ‘murder’ of Hannah Montana: Authenticity and young female celebrity – Melanie Kennedy



The Olsen Twins and internship: The career girl as ‘eager serf’– Vernon Shetley and Lena McCauley.



Macaulay Culkin and child stardom in the 1990s – Holly Chard



The devil you don’t know? The rise and fall and rise of Linda Blair – Jason Lee



Natalie Portman and transgressing boundaries between childhood and adulthood in Luc Besson’s Léon – Stuart Hanson
Section C: Childhood, celebrity and the media




Created by children: Conceptualising the child as media producer – Andrew Zolides



The child star as celebrity: Shirley Temple, fandom and memory – Geoff Lealand



Parchís as a multimedia franchise: Consumption and fandom across the Hispanic world – Vicente Rodriguez Ortega, Miguel Fernandez Labayen and Sonia Garcia Lopez



Music/Image and the cusp-persona: The child/adult public persona of child celebrities – David Marshall