WINSTON-SALEM, NC (FEBRUARY 12, 2019)—“Celebrity and Youth: Mediated Audiences, Fame, Aspirations and Identity Formation” is the latest book from Salem College Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies Spring-Serenity Duvall, PhD. The book, compiled by Duvall, features contributions by several international writers and explores the impact of celebrity on youth and culture in general.

Available from Mediated Youth Series, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., “Celebrity and Youth” examines contemporary celebrity culture with an emphasis on how young celebrities are manufactured, how fan communities are cultivated, and how young audiences consume and aspire to fame. The book foregrounds considerations of diversity within celebrity and fan cultures and takes an international perspective on the production of stardom.

“For generations, young people have aspired to be famous and often closely follow their favorite celebrities. The researchers in this collection explore what it means to be a fan, how young people become celebrities and handle their fame, and how celebrities influence young people, politics, and business,” Dr. Duvall said. “We take seriously that young people can be thoughtful consumers and yet impressionable—savvy celebrities and yet vulnerable to the pressures of fame.”

Chapters include interviews with professional athletes in the United States about their experiences with stardom after coming out as gay and interviews with young people in Europe about their consumption of celebrity and aspirations of achieving fame via social media. Other chapters include interviews with young Canadian women who illuminate the potential influence of famous feminists on audience political engagement and critical analysis of media narratives about race, happiness, cultural appropriation, and popular feminisms.

“’Celebrity and Youth’ is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on how conceptions of youth play a central role in the production, circulation, and reception of celebrity culture,” Mary Celeste Kearney, director of gender studies and associate professor of film, television, and theatre at the University of Notre Dame said. “Taking the reader through various interconnecting strands of analysis including the construction of young star images, the manufacture of youth as a desirable and desiring subjectivity, and the ebbing agency that is found within and across fan communities, this volume places young people at the heart of why and how celebrity matters.”

The book is available from Amazon at amazon.com/Celebrity-Youth-Audiences-Aspirations-Formation or from the publisher at peterlang.com/view/title/64433.

About Spring-Serenity Duvall

Duvall’s work as a media studies scholar focuses on how celebrities who engage in social action can both reinforce and disrupt gender norms, systems of racial oppression, and neocolonial power hierarchies. With particular attention to hashtag activism, celebrity athletes, youth consumption of celebrity, and celebrity motherhood, she interrogates global media discourses about the efficacy of collective action, symbolic protest, and commodity activism. She serves as chair of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Commission on the Status of Women. In addition to studying celebrity and activism, she is the co-author, with Dr. Leigh Moscowitz, of the book “Snatched: Child Abductions in US News,” which analyzes more than a decade’s worth of mainstream news coverage of high-profile abduction cases.

About Salem Academy and College

Salem Academy and College is the oldest educational institution for girls and women in the United States. With more than 15,000 alumnae who serve as teachers, physicians, researchers, artists, musicians, inventors, community volunteers, and business executives, Salem Academy and Salem College continue to educate the next generation of global leaders. For more information about Salem Academy, please visit salemacademy.com.  For more information about Salem College, please visit salem.edu.