LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:10 October 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2014
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

SEEING STARS: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity
by Pramod K. Nayar, Sage Publications Ltd., 2009, 220 pp.
ISBN: 9788178299075

Reviewed by Kooshna Gupta, M.A., Research Scholar


The Book

The book is a collage of events from the multi- facet celebrities’ lives, which Pramod K. Nayar technically depicts with an analytical angle, based on theoretical knowledge and vivid examples. It is an umbrella of celebrities ranging from Bollywood, T.V, Hollywood, sportsman, industrialists, politics and so on. Each concept, from both sides of the coin (the audience and celebrities), is appropriately supported with quotations or theories of experts.

The Author

Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. His areas of interests are “English colonial writing on India, Postcolonial Studies, Travel Writing, Human Rights and Cultural Studies (including celebrity studies, digital culture studies and superheroes). .”1 He is the author of a number of books, namely Reading Culture: Theory, Praxis, Politics (2006), Virtual Worlds: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cybertechnology (2004), Literary Theory Today (2002), English Writing and India, 1600–1920:Colonizing Aesthetics (2008),Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (2008), The Great Uprising: India, 1857 (2007), The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar (2007) and many more. He is the editor of The Penguin 1857 Reader. His largest project to date, the 5-volume Women in Colonial India: Historical Documents and Sources, released in 2013.[2][3]

Description of the Book

Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity is a Sage Publications book, published in 2009. It has 220 pages, covering the preface, acknowledgements, five chapters, conclusion, bibliography, index and about the author respectively. Its reddish cover with partial snapshots of some celebrities from various fields is attractive and already we have the flavour of the book. “The style is informal and breezy, but the information is solid and in-depth, so it is accessible to readers beyond the purely academic. It offers interesting insights into an aspect of popular culture that is all around us and governs our lives in a hundred ways, yet we rarely give much thought to the phenomenon.” (The New Indian Express).4

Critical Summary of the Book

The Preface summarises the book systematically, ultimately arousing the desire to go through the pages spontaneously. The book is “mostly wearing through many features and signs of the texts of celebrity culture” (p.viii), which Nayar describes a celebrity as “a Spectacle”. Thus, “celebrity culture produced, disseminated and consumed through global media is a truly global culture now.” (P.viii)

The writer pays gratitude to his professional contributors and personal acquaintances in his acknowledgement.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Kooshna Gupta, M.A., Research Scholar
Department of Linguistics
School of Languages
Gujarat University
Navrangpura, Ahmedabad – 380009
Gujarat
India
ereshma@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.