Arab Stardom: Transnational Glamour and Empowerment

Building on the work of star studies scholars, this collection provides contextual analyses of off-screen representation, as well as close textual analyses of films and star personas, thereby offering an in-depth study of the Arab star as text and context of Arab cinema. Using the tools of audience reception studies, the collection will also look at how stars (of film, stage, screen and new media) are viewed and received in different cultural contexts, both within and outside of the Arabic-speaking world.

Arab cinema is often discussed in terms of political representation and independent art film, but rarely in terms of stardom, glamour, performance or masquerade. Aside from a few individual studies on female stardom or aspects of Arab masculinity, no major English-language study on Arab stardom exists, and collections on transnational stars or world cinema also often neglect to include Arab performers. This new book seeks to address this gap by providing the first study dedicated entirely to stardom on the Arab screen.

Structured chronologically and thematically, this collection highlights and explores Arab film, screen and music stars through a transnational and interdisciplinary set of contributions that draw on feminist, performance and film theories, media studies, sound studies, material culture, queer star and celebrity studies, and social media studies.

Kaya Davies Hayon is Honorary Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Lincoln, UK, and Research and Development Manager at Belong - The Cohesion and Integration Network. She is the author of Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Film (Bloomsbury, 2018), and she has also published on contemporary Arab and African film in edited collections, special issues and journals, including Alphaville: Journal of Film and Media and Studies in French Cinema.

Stefanie Van de Peer is Lecturer in Film & Media at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, UK. She specialises in Arab and African cinema, with a focus on women’s roles in the film industries. She has written two books, Negotiating Dissidence: The Pioneering Women of Arab Documentary (2017) and Women in African Cinema: Beyond the Body Politic (2020) and three edited collections, Art and Trauma in Africa (IB Tauris, 2013), Film Festivals and the Middle East (2014) and Animation in the Middle East (IB Tauris, 2017). In addition, she programmes Arab cinema for international film festivals, and she works for the Africa in Motion film festival in Scotland.