The Celebrity Aura Exhibition

The Celebrity Aura Exhibition was an art exhibition centred around 'celebrity aura' that featured 13 local artists. It was run by the School of Communication and Creative Arts and was held in conjunction with the Inaugural Celebrity Studies Journal Conference (12-14th December) at Deakin University.

Celebrity and the media

Celebrity and the Media introduces the reader to the key terms, concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity. In this insightful text Redmond explores the impacts of celebrity culture on the modern media and everyday life, drawing attention to the ways in which people experience celebrity culture and how celebrities are able to communicate through spectacle, ritual, the confession and the close-up. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies from the worlds of film, music, television, and sports, and featuring topical, current and popular celebrity examples, the book stands as a pertinent examination of the influence that celebrity has on the way people place themselves in the modern world.

Beyond anonymity and the every-day: celebrity and the capture of educational leadership

This conceptual paper traces the development of the culture and capture of celebrity in the field of educational leadership. Drawing on Rojek’s (Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books, 2001) typology of celebrity, we examine the emergence of celebrity of leadership that is activated via the current policy environment that compels schools and school leaders to be recognised and well-known. It is this well-knownness that subsequently contributes to the school as a marketable commodity that “people like us” desire. We highlight the complex convergence of these two phenomena in our reading of the independent school sector in Victoria (Australia).

Celebrity and power : fame in contemporary culture

Through a new introduction for this edition, Marshall investigates the viewing public's desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admireres closer than ever before.  He explores the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaing for audiences in new ways. The new introduction also details the development of celebrity studies and the need for research into the construction of persona in contemporary culture as the dimension of publicizing the self has expanded through online culture.

David Bowie: dancing with madness and proselytising the socio-political in art and life

A longstanding, successful and frequently controversial career spanning more than four decades establishes David Bowie as charged with individual agency. The notion of ‘agency’ here refers particularly to the ‘ability of people, individually and collectively to influence their own lives and the society in which they live’ (Germov and Poole, 2007: 7). That Bowie has influenced many lives is undeniable to his fans. He has long demonstrated an avid curiosity for the enduring patterns of social life which is reflected in his art. Bowie’s opus contains the elements of ideological narratives around sexual (mis)adventure, expressivity, and; resistance to ‘normative’ behaviour. He requisitions his audiences, through frequently indirect lyrics and images, to critically question sanity, identity and essentially what it means to be ‘us’ and why we are here. Here, in this context, ‘dancing with madness’ assumes an intimate relationship, even if brief, where ideas and emotions come passionately together for the purpose of creative expression much like the intertwining and energetic performance of the partner dance Tango. As such, ‘dancing’ is argued here to be an appropriate descriptor for how Bowie has engaged with creative cultural forms but not meant to be self-conscious nor indicate superficiality or ignorance. The idea of madness for its part is a theme in many of his compositions, for example the original album cover for The Man Who Sold the World (1971)  depicts an asylum and includes the song ‘All The Madmen’ and Aladdin Sane (1973)—a lad insane--are but two examples. This paper argues that Bowie’s frequently astute contemplations, manifest through his art over a period now spanning more than forty years, continues to draw fans of like mind to his work with the result that he has a legitimate claim to influence and affect.

Persona as method: exploring celebrity and the public self through persona studies

Researching persona is a study in the production, dissemination and exchange of public identity. One starting point in the process is to look at the production of the presentation of the self online, which allows for a particularly valuable way of exploring celebrity and public personalities. In order to advance on this point, this article examines three emerging and complementary methods of persona studies that work to capture different elements in the production of public identity. In the following we provide an introduction to the research currently being generated using three intersectional methods as a primer to the study of persona. We first present an adaptation of interpretative phenomenological analysis for the investigation of online identity as a means for understanding the strategic and negotiated agency that constructing a public persona entails. Second, we outline the potential for methods of social network analysis and data visualisation to contribute to the investigation of networked structures of public identities, and to further explore the assembly of a professional persona in the creative and niche paratextual industry roles enabled by social media. Finally, to explore reputation and relational cultural power we consider how persona is constituted by connections, adapting prosopography – an historical method for identifying relational status in a community – to the study of current public production of the self and relational reputation as a form of cultural field. All of these techniques are equally useful for the direct study of celebrity persona, and function dynamically together as means to access the wider dimensions of public persona.

A companion to celebrity

Companion to Celebrity presents a multi-disciplinary collection of original essays that explore myriad issues relating to the origins, evolution, and current trends in the field of celebrity studies. Offers a detailed, systematic, and clear presentation of all aspects of celebrity studies, with a structure that carefully build its enquiry Draws on the latest scholarly developments in celebrity analyses Presents new and provocative ways of exploring celebrity's meanings and textures Considers the revolutionary ways in which new social media have impacted on the production and consumption of celebrity

Celebrity endorsers' performance on the “ground” and on the “floor”

This article analyzes the relationship between two types of performances, one on the ground (of a tennis court) and the other on the floor (of the stock market). The empirical application looks into the tennis player, Rafael Nadal, and his endorsing firms. The findings show a positive reaction in the market value when the tennis player wins matches in the Grand Slams, the intriguing effect being the diminishing sensitivity pattern that such reaction shows and the absence of loss aversion.

The wonders of nature and art; or, A concise account of whatever is most curious and remarkable in the world; whether relating to its animal, vegetable and mineral productions, or to the manufactures, buildings and inventions of its inhabitants, compiled from historical and geographical works of established celebrity, and illustrated with the discoveries of modern travellers.

Mode of access: Internet.

Spectacular Disappearances : Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 /

How can the modern individual control his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching? This question is a familiar one amid the the twenty-first century's architecture of 24-hour newsrooms, chat rooms and interrogation rooms, but this book traces this question back to the stages, the pages, and the streets of eighteenth-century London--and to the strange and spectacular self-representations performed there by England's first modern celebrities. These self-representations include the enormous wig that the actor, manager, and playwright Colley Cibber donned in his most famous comic role as Lord Foppington--and that later reappeared on the head of Cibber's cross-dressing daughter, Charlotte Charke. They include the black page of 'Tristram Shandy,' a memorial to the parson Yorick (and his author Laurence Sterne), a page so full of ink that it cannot be read. And they include the puffs and prologues that David Garrick used to hiehgten his publicity while protecting his privacy; the epistolary autobiography, modeled on the sentimental novel, of Garrick's protégée George Anne Bellamy; and the elliptical poems and portraits of the poet, actress, and royal courtesan Mary Robinson, known throughout her life as Perdita. Linking all of these representations is a quality that Fawcett terms "over-expression." 'Spectacular Disappearances' theorizes over-expression as the unique quality that allows celebrities to meet their spectators' demands for disclosure without giving themselves away. Like a spotlight so brilliant it is blinding, these exaggerated but illegible self-representations suggest a new way of understanding some of the key aspects of celebrity culture, both in the eighteenth century and today. They also challenge many of the disciplinary divides between theatrical character and novelistic character in eighteenth-century studies, or between performance studies and literary studies today. Drawing on a wide variety of materials and methodologies, 'Spectacular Disappearances' provides an overlooked but indispensable history for scholars and students of celebrity studies, performance studies, and autobiography--as well as to anyone curious about the origins of the eighteenth-century self.

The wonders of nature and art; or, A concise account of whatever is most curious and remarkable in the world; compiled from historical and geographical works of established celebrity, and illustrated with the discoveries of modern travellers.

Mode of access: Internet.