Disassembling the Celebrity Figure: Credibility and the Incredible (At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, 99)

Disassembling the Celebrity Figure: Credibility and the Incredible questions the credibility of celebrity brands, exploring how fandoms depend on perceptions and representations of authenticity. It asks how authenticity is projected by global celebrities, and how fans consume these carefully curated personas, and explores how the media breaks down barriers between celebrities and fans. It presents a discussion of celebrities as brands, exploring how their images are maintained after they pass away. It also offers analysis of the ways in which historical figures are later reconstructed as celebrities, and explores how their images are circulated and consumed across contemporary media. Ultimately, the book examines authenticity in celebrity culture by looking at fandom, media representation, branding and celebrity deaths.

Contributors are Marie Josephine Bennett, Lise Dilling-Nielsen, Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, Mingyi Hou, Renata Iwicka, Ephraim Das Janssen, Magdalen Wing-Chi Ki, Celia Lam, Mirella Longo, Aliah Mansor, Jackie Raphael and Millicent Weber.

Celia Lam, Ph.D. (2011), University of Sydney, is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. She has published on celebrity and fan studies, including Becoming Brands: Celebrity, Activism and Politics (WaterHill, 2017).

Jackie Raphael, Ph.D. (2013), Curtin University, is a sessional academic at that university. She has published various papers and books including Becoming Brands: Celebrity, Activism and Politics (2017) and Building Bridges in Celebrity Studies (2016).

Millicent Weber, Ph.D. (2016), Monash University, is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her work on publishing and literary culture appears in Convergence and Continuum, and most recently in Publishing Means Business: Australian Perspectives (Monash University Publishing, 2017).