Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity

About the Author

Gëzim Alpion is an academic, political analyst, writer, playwright, and essayist. He holds a BA from Cairo University and a PhD from Durham University, UK. Currently based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham, UK, Alpion’s main publications to date include Foreigner Complex: Essays and Fiction about Egypt, (2002) Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? (2007), and Encounters with Civilizations: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa (2011). Alpion is an editorial board member and reviewer for a range of peer-reviewed journals including Celebrity Studies, (Routledge).

Alpion's plays Vouchers: A Tragedy (2001) and If Only the Dead Could Listen (2008) address the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in the West. Sponsored by Arts Council England, the plays have been successfully performed across the UK.

Alpion has written features on British, Balkan, Middle Eastern and Indian politics, culture and identity for The Guardian, Hindustan Times, The Middle East Times, The Birmingham Post, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, The Hürriyet Daily News, and The Conversation (website).

According to the American journalist, political author, and historian Stephen Schwartz, Alpion is 'a pioneer in the academic study of the phenomenon of celebrity', and ‘the most authoritative English-language author on Blessed Teresa of Kolkata'.

Alpion's first study on Mother Teresa ‘Media, ethnicity and patriotism: The Balkans ‘unholy war’ for the appropriation of Mother Teresa’, was published in the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans (now Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies), in 2004. This was followed by the article ‘Media and celebrity culture: subjectivist, structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to Mother Teresa’s celebrity status’, which was published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies in 2006. Alpion's most recent study on Mother Teresa 'The Emergence of Mother Teresa as a Religious Visionary and the Initial Resistance to Her Charism/a: A Sociological and Public Theology Perspective’, was published in the International Journal of Public Theology in 2014. Alpion's new monograph on Mother Teresa's early years in Skopje will be published in 2016.

In June 2014, Alpion began a campaign in support of the canonization of Mother Teresa. 'One of the reasons why Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization has stalled', Alpion told Matters India in September 2014, 'is due to the revelations about her deep distress in experiencing the ‘dark night of the soul’; this often forced her to doubt both God’s existence and the nature of her decision to serve the poorest of the poor.' The camping, which has crossed 1,700 signatures and is supported by church authorities, celebrities, film stars, priests, nuns and laity from 45 countries, has attracted the attention of the media in several countries.

Overview

Mother Teresa was one of the most prominent religious figures of the twentieth century. Apart from Pope John Paul II, she was arguably the most advertised religious celebrity in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

During her lifetime, as well as posthumously, the figure, work and legacy of Mother Teresa generated, and continue to generate, a huge level of interest and heated debate.

In Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?, Gëzim Alpion explores the significance of Mother Teresa to the mass media, to celebrity culture, to the Church and to various political and national groups.

Drawing on new research on Mother Teresa's early years, Alpion charts the rise to fame of this pioneering religious personality, investigating the celebrity discourse in which an exemplary nun was turned into a media and humanitarian icon.

The book provides an in-depth cultural and critical analysis of Mother Teresa, and the way she and others created, promoted and censored her public image, in the context of the sociology of fame, media, religion and nationality.

A fascinating section explores the ways different vested interests have sought to appropriate the nun after her death, and also examines Mother Teresa's own attitude to her childhood and to the Balkan conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s.

Referring to Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?, Stephen Schwartz holds that 'in its depth, breadth, and seriousness', this monograph 'may stand for some time to come as the single most important biography of Mother Teresa in English’. In his review of the book which appeared in the American Communication Journal, Marvin Williams contends that ‘Alpion’s examination of Mother Teresa’s celebrity is a case study of corporate identity management in today’s global media environment. His weaving of primary texts into the setting of this character piece creates a comprehensive cross-cultural examination that has the potential to become a new archetypal work of this mercurial personality.’

In Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? and other academic publications on the Albanian-born nun, Alpion is critical of Christopher Hitchens' vitriol on her. Writing in the Hindustan Times in 2014, Alpion criticizes Hitchens and other detractors of Mother Teresa, such as Germaine Greer and Richard Dawkins for, what he calls, their 'superficial understanding' of the sister.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments, Preface by Professor David Marsh, Introduction, Chapter 1 'Mother Teresa and Celebrity Culture', Chapter 2 'The Balkans Appropriation of Mother Teresa', Chapter 3 'The Forgotten Years', Chapter 4 'Mother Teresa’s Attitude towards Her Early Years', Chapter 5 'Jesus the Divine Superstar', Chapter 6 'From Church Rebel to Church Asset', Conclusion, Select Bibliography, Select Filmography, Index

Editions

The first English edition of Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? was published by Routledge in London and New York in 2007. The Indian edition, also in English, was published by Routledge India in New Delhi in 2008, and is available only in South Asia. Translated into Italian by Massimo Laria, the Italian edition, Madre Teresa: Santa o Celebrità?, was published by Salerno Editrice in Rome in 2008.

Praise for the Book

Here is a selection of quotes from various reviews of Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?.

‘After Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? scholarship about Mother Teresa will not be the same.… In his unparalleled scholarly book, Alpion has presented a multidimensional portrait of Mother Teresa. And she appears human as she rarely did in any discourse about her.’

Professor Gaston Roberge, The New Leader, India

‘One must ungrudgingly give it to Alpion that this has been a work of monumental proportions involving great dexterity….All methodological exclusivity has been abjured, allowing the multihued disciplines to coalesce as needed in the research….All this makes the book compulsory reading.’

Professor Bonita Aleaz, The Asia Journal of Theology, India

‘[A] superbly researched work…. After Germaine Greer, Christopher Hitchens and Susan Shields this book of Alpion’s feels like a whiff of delightfully fresh air…. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to everyone.’

Professor Cyril Veliath, Bulletin of the Faculty of Foreign Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

‘Alpion is to be congratulated on both the depth of his research spread over several years, and the balanced way he sets out his facts….It is a clever book, providing a great deal of original and new thought on the subject but it is not a book to skim through in a couple of hours.’

Primrose Peacock, Catholic South West, UK

‘Alpion’s book....is unique in locating the appeal of Mother Teresa within today’s broader celebrity culture…. For Alpion, celebrity culture is a modern form of religion and Mother Teresa was the ultimate religious celebrity of the modern era.’

Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Spiked Magazine, UK

‘Alpion [who] writes illuminatingly about different forms of ‘celebrity discourse’…has written an absorbing analysis what this nun has meant to the world.’

John Hodgson, Light Magazine, UK

‘This engaging book raises as many questions as it answers…. Alpion unpacks the full historical background in meticulous detail... The result is intriguing, if a little unsatisfactory. His thesis is original: Mother Teresa knew well what she was about… Her success and subsequent ‘fame’ were of her own making, and she was far brighter than she made out… So there was sacrifice involved in her quest for fame, but was her integrity one of the casualties? That is what this book tries to explore — hence its telling subtitle.’

Dr Lavinia Byrne, Church Times, UK

‘Alpion has not simply added another book to the already vast literature on Mother Teresa; he has actually enriched it. …Alpion has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary popular culture.’

Dr Michael Schmidt-Neke, Albanische Hefte, Bochum, Germany

‘I can’t but conclude that after all of his careful research and reasoned probing, Alpion was personally touched by this great woman…. Alpion does ask some controversial questions. However, his answers are fair and reasoned from his point of view.’

Dr Margaret Nutting Ralph, Albanian Journal of Politics, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

‘[T]he book does offer the migrationist a very useful account of an exceptional migration trajectory and, although this is not a declared objective of the book, it is also worth reading for its migratory sub-text. Mother Teresa as a migrant woman in the early part of the twentieth century makes for fascinating speculation regarding her motives and the modality of her mobility. I enjoyed this book and anyone interested in how Albanian identity is understood and constructed should take the time to read it carefully.’

Professor Glyn Davies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, UK

Reviews

The book has been reviewed in a number of languages including English, German, Italian, Maltese, Slovakian and Albanian.