Star Studies

Martin Shingler is Senior Lecturer in Radio& Film Studies at the University of Sunderland (UK). He has specialist expertise in Hollywood melodrama and the woman's film, screen acting, the star system, film sound, radio drama and comedy. He is the co-author of two books, On Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio, with Cindy Wieringa, (Arnold, 1998) and Melodrama: Genre, Style& Sensibility, with John Mercer (Wallflower Press, 2004). He has also published essays on the Hollywood film star Bette Davis in the books Hollywood Spectatorship, eds. Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (BFI, 2001) and Screen Acting, eds. Alan Lovell and Peter Kramer, (Routledge 1999), and in the journals Screen, the Journal of American Studies, the Journal of Film& Video, Theatre Annual and Film History. He has edited a dossier on Bette Davis for the journal Screen (2008) and an edition of the Radio Journal (2008). In addition to his work as a writer and editor, Shingler has been involved in organising four major international conferences on sound in the media, Sounding Out (Staffordshire University, 2002), Sounding Out 2 (University of Nottingham, 2004), Sounding Out 3 (University of Sunderland, 2006) and Sounding Out 4 (Sunderland, 2008), being the principal organiser for the last two events. This biennial symposium on sound in the media regularly brings together from around the world over a hundred theorists and practitioners of sound from film, radio, television, new media, audio-books, sound art and electro-acoustic music.

• Acknowledgments.- Introduction.- 1 Star Studies: mapping out the field of star studies within film studies.- 2 Methods: ways of analysing screen performance.- 3 Star Qualities: in search of the prerequisites for stardom.- 4 Star Systems: the mechanics of star production.- 5 Star Identities: from image to persona and publicity to gossip.- 6 Unstable Symbols: on the representativeness of film stars.- Conclusion.- Notes.- References.- Index.