Call for papers| Gender, Celebrity and Fandoms in Contemporary China
Call for Papers is now open for our upcoming workshop: Gender, Celebrity and Fandom in Contemporary China.
China Studies Centre Workshop
Convenor: Associate Professor Anthea Taylor
Submission deadline: Monday, 16th January 2026
Celebrities can very publicly embody challenges to normative gender regimes, including in the Chinese context: they can help precipitate new cultural conversations about all genders, including the kinds of femininities and masculinities that are privileged over others. Whether traditional celebrities, or micro-celebrities and influencers, fame and stardom offer rich sites for feminist analysis, as do the fans and fans cultures that develop around them. Celebrities, be it through making claims about the need for greater gender equality or challenging stigmas against single women, mediate audience understandings of and responses to pressing gender issues. They are ‘folded into audience ways of making sense of the world’ (Turner et al. 2000, p. 15) in ways that are not sufficiently understood.
Coming to terms with what audiences actually do with celebrity, along with their role in its maintenance, is crucial for advancing knowledge on why and how celebrities matter in our everyday lives, and with what social and commercial effects. As many scholars have established, celebrities rely upon fan affective investment for the maintenance of their attention capital, and digital media have fundamentally transformed what have often been dismissed as parasocial relationships. Rather than being the kind of one-sided, pathologised style relationships that have been commonly dismissed, celebrity-fan interactions require a more nuanced approach. In addition, increasingly diverse and sophisticated fandoms labour to create spaces of belonging and community, both online and offline, within the constraints of specific platforms and regulatory frameworks.
Papers may be about celebrity or fandom or alternatively may consider both together. We welcome papers analysing specific Chinese celebrities in areas as diverse as writing, music, television and film, in terms of how they are publicly represented and/or how they represent themselves (i.e. their persona-building labour via forms such as social media, memoir, interviews etc.). In addition, papers may examine micro-celebrities and influencers whose fame is created, sustained or contested via platforms such as Xiaohongshu or Bilibili. We also encourage papers that focus on specific fandoms/fan labour, with a focus on gender and its intersections with other aspects of identity (such as class, sexuality, race and ethnicity, age, and region, as relevant).
This international workshop will enable approximately 15-18 scholars, especially HDRs and ECRs, to discuss their work in this area of research and to receive feedback on written material and mentoring from accomplished experts in the field of feminist celebrity and fan studies. It will also engage explicitly with the methodological challenges of doing such often interdisciplinary work.
Abstracts of 250 words are invited from scholars working in the broad area of gender and the media in contemporary China; in particular, HDRs and ECRs, including those working in China, are encouraged to participate. For those selected, papers of between 6,000-8,000 words will need to be submitted for circulation a month prior to the April workshop (deadline: Friday 27th March). It is expected that the workshop will result in a special issue of an appropriate Q1 journal, such as Celebrity Studies (to be published in 2026/2027 depending on the chosen journal’s schedule/availability).
NB: Priority will be given to those who did not attend the previous CSC ‘Gender and media in contemporary China’ workshop in June 2025.
Contact : Associate Professor Anthea Taylor, Convenor, Gender and Media in Contemporary China Research Group, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Contact email: anthea.taylor@sydney.edu.au.
Call for Papers is now open for our upcoming workshop: Gender, Celebrity and Fandom in Contemporary China.
China Studies Centre Workshop
Convenor: Associate Professor Anthea Taylor
Submission deadline: Monday, 16th January 2026
Celebrities can very publicly embody challenges to normative gender regimes, including in the Chinese context: they can help precipitate new cultural conversations about all genders, including the kinds of femininities and masculinities that are privileged over others. Whether traditional celebrities, or micro-celebrities and influencers, fame and stardom offer rich sites for feminist analysis, as do the fans and fans cultures that develop around them. Celebrities, be it through making claims about the need for greater gender equality or challenging stigmas against single women, mediate audience understandings of and responses to pressing gender issues. They are ‘folded into audience ways of making sense of the world’ (Turner et al. 2000, p. 15) in ways that are not sufficiently understood.
Coming to terms with what audiences actually do with celebrity, along with their role in its maintenance, is crucial for advancing knowledge on why and how celebrities matter in our everyday lives, and with what social and commercial effects. As many scholars have established, celebrities rely upon fan affective investment for the maintenance of their attention capital, and digital media have fundamentally transformed what have often been dismissed as parasocial relationships. Rather than being the kind of one-sided, pathologised style relationships that have been commonly dismissed, celebrity-fan interactions require a more nuanced approach. In addition, increasingly diverse and sophisticated fandoms labour to create spaces of belonging and community, both online and offline, within the constraints of specific platforms and regulatory frameworks.
Papers may be about celebrity or fandom or alternatively may consider both together. We welcome papers analysing specific Chinese celebrities in areas as diverse as writing, music, television and film, in terms of how they are publicly represented and/or how they represent themselves (i.e. their persona-building labour via forms such as social media, memoir, interviews etc.). In addition, papers may examine micro-celebrities and influencers whose fame is created, sustained or contested via platforms such as Xiaohongshu or Bilibili. We also encourage papers that focus on specific fandoms/fan labour, with a focus on gender and its intersections with other aspects of identity (such as class, sexuality, race and ethnicity, age, and region, as relevant).
This international workshop will enable approximately 15-18 scholars, especially HDRs and ECRs, to discuss their work in this area of research and to receive feedback on written material and mentoring from accomplished experts in the field of feminist celebrity and fan studies. It will also engage explicitly with the methodological challenges of doing such often interdisciplinary work.
Abstracts of 250 words are invited from scholars working in the broad area of gender and the media in contemporary China; in particular, HDRs and ECRs, including those working in China, are encouraged to participate. For those selected, papers of between 6,000-8,000 words will need to be submitted for circulation a month prior to the April workshop (deadline: Friday 27th March). It is expected that the workshop will result in a special issue of an appropriate Q1 journal, such as Celebrity Studies (to be published in 2026/2027 depending on the chosen journal’s schedule/availability).
NB: Priority will be given to those who did not attend the previous CSC ‘Gender and media in contemporary China’ workshop in June 2025.
Contact : Associate Professor Anthea Taylor, Convenor, Gender and Media in Contemporary China Research Group, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Contact email: anthea.taylor@sydney.edu.au.
Good to know
Highlights
- 2 days 8 hours
- In person
Location
Suzhou Industrial Park
Xing Hua Jie
Su Zhou Shi, Jiang Su Sheng 215121
How do you want to get there?
