Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive, the first scholarly book on this internationally renowned feminist, draws upon Greer’s largely unexplored archive to demonstrate her impact on readers and viewers since the 1970s. Across many decades in the limelight and through multiple media forms, the provocative Greer has worked to shape audience understandings of gender, sexuality, and feminism. Through deep engagement with archival material, Anthea Taylor offers a compelling reassessment of Greer’s celebrity feminist labour and its effects over time. Examining archived letters from fans, anti-fans, and those in between, this innovative volume shows how and why readers and viewers have come to affectively invest – or disinvest – in this iconoclastic feminist. Advancing debates about the social and political function of celebrity, Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive is essential reading for scholars in Gender Studies, History, Archival Studies, and Media and Cultural Studies.

Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive focuses on one of the world's most famous feminists, using previously unexplored archival material to demonstrate the impact of Greer's celebrity feminism. It is an important resource to scholars in Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and Sociology.

As a student in Melbourne, Elizabeth Kleinhenz heard frequent talk of this almost mythical figure, Germaine Greer. Urged on by her mother, a first wave feminist, she read The Female Eunuch, a clarion call that rallied women to assert their female power, and, like her mother and millions of others across the world, changed her life. As one of the first researchers permitted to trawl through the Germaine Greer Archive housed at the University of Melbourne, Elizabeth found evidence of a brilliant teacher, serious scholar, flamboyantly attired hippie TV presenter, provocative magazine columnist and editor, real estate investor, domestic goddess, creator of extravagant gardens and preserves, shelterer of strays and waifs, libertarian, bohemian, anarchist, working journalist, correspondent, traveller and adventurer, international celebrity and performer, wag and ratbag, mentor and icon. Germaine Greer has said that her archive is a representation of the times in which she has lived. Yet she anticipated, catalysed and triumphantly rode the wave of the immense social and intellectual changes of her era. For Elizabeth, two things are certain: women’s lives today are very different from how they were when Germaine Greer and she left school; and much of the change that has occurred over the past half-century can be directly attributed to the lifetime of intense scholarship, unremitting hard work and influence of Germaine Greer.

Germaine Greer is one of the most enduring and influential figures of the second wave of the women’s movement. The Female Eunuch (1970) is one of second-wave feminism’s most widely recognised publications and its author has come to embody and indeed expand our understanding of second-wave feminism in a way that few others have. Yet, while Greer’s public visibility never seems to wane, her writings and her politics have failed to attract the kind of sustained critical engagement they warrant. This volume represents the first collection of essays to examine Greer, her politics, her writing, and her status as a feminist celebrity. The essays in this collection cover The Female Eunuch (1970), Greer’s public rivalry with Arianna Stassinopoulos, her time in America, her ideas and politics, and her styling as feminist fashion icon. Many essays include new insights drawn from previously unseen material in the recently launched Germaine Greer Archive at the University of Melbourne, Australia. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Australian Feminist Studies.

In the first book-length study of celebrity feminism, Anthea Taylor convincingly argues that the most visible feminists in the mediasphere have been authors of bestselling works of non-fiction: feminist ‘blockbusters’. Celebrity and The Feminist Blockbuster explores how the authors of these popular feminist books have shaped the public identity of modern feminism, in some cases over many decades. Maintaining a distinction between women who are famous because of their feminism and those who later add feminism to their ‘brand’, Taylor contends that Western celebrity feminism, as a political mode of public subjectivity, cannot in any simple way be seen as homologous with other forms of stardom. Moving deftly from the 1960s to the present, focusing on how feminist authors have actively worked to manufacture their public personas, she demonstrates that the blockbuster remains crucial to feminist celebrification but is now often augmented with digital media. Advancing celebrity studies by placing the figure of the feminist front and centre, Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster is essential reading for all those interested in gender, popular feminism, and the politics of renown.

This intellectually vibrant volume is the first collection to deal with Australian celebrity in ways that account for both cultural and gendered specificities, demonstrating how gendered ways of imagining Australia are reinforced and contested in celebrity representations and self-presentations. Gender and Australian Celebrity Culture engages with celebrities across a diverse range of fields – actors, journalists, athletes, comedians, writers, and television personalities – and in doing so critically reflects upon different forms of Australian fame and the media platforms and practices that sustain them. Authors in this volume engage directly with pertinent issues relating to gender and sexuality, including celebrity feminism and the generative capacity of feminist rage; normative femininity and its instability; hegemonic masculinities; and queerness and its (in)visibility. Contributors also intervene in a number of ongoing debates in media and cultural studies more broadly, including those around the politics and affordances of digital media; whiteness and Australia’s colonial histories; celebrity labour; and methodologies for celebrity studies. This timely collection urges scholars of celebrity to attend further both to the gendered nature of celebrity culture and to local conditions of production and consumption. This book will be of key interest to researchers and graduate students in cultural studies, television and film studies, digital media studies, critical race and whiteness studies, gender and sexuality studies, and literary studies.

“Ferocious psychic need and volcanic energy drive this combined memoir, detective story and travelogue” from the author of The Female Eunuch (The New Yorker). After her father died, influential feminist writer and public intellectual Germaine Greer realizes how little she knows about him. She decides to track the life of her father, an Australian intelligence officer during World War II, to uncover the roots of his secrecy and distance. As she painstakingly assembles the jigsaw pieces of the past, Greer discovers surprising secrets about her father, her family, and herself. During her three-year quest, Greer travels from England to Australia, Tasmania, India, and Malta; searches through scores of genealogical, civil, and military archives; and delves into the memories of the men and women who may—or may not—have known Reg Greer. Yet the heart of her “lyrical but brutal elegy” is her own emotional journey, as the startling facts behind her father’s façade force her to painfully examine her own notions of truth and loyalty, family and obligation (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Anyone who has done this kind of search will identify with Ms. Greer’s frustration, admire her persistence, laugh at her accuracy and rejoice in her discoveries.” —The New York Times Book Review “The deeply affecting climax is a remarkable feat of family reconstruction.” —Publishers Weekly