Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Fandom in India

Dr. Roos Gerritsen is a media anthropologist writing on popular culture, photography, and cinema in India. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University and has been an assistant professor at Heidelberg University. She has published among others in Ethnos and Visual Anthropology.

"Roos Gerritsen’s Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Fandom in India offers incomparable insight into the politics of Kollywood, the aspirations of its stars and fans. [...] [The book] is an important addition of a growing body of work that investigates Indian urban change."- Michiel Baas, newbooks.asia (2021) "Gerritsen's rich ethnography offers readers a compelling look into the passionate world of 'superstar' Rajinikanth's fans. A fascinating, vivid portrait of the myriad practices and web of connections that bring together spectatorship, visual practices, performativity, play and desire shaping fans' lives at the intersection of fantasy and reality, this volume is an insightful and thoughtful contribution to scholarship on fans, cinema and public culture in India."- Lakshmi Srinivas, author of House Full: Indian Cinema and the Active Audience

• Introduction 1. Keeping in control: The figure of the fan in the Tamil film industry 2. Intimacy on display: Movie stars, images, and everyday life 3. Vexed Veneration: The politics of fandom 4. Public intimacies and collective imaginaries 5. Chennai Beautiful: Shifting urban landscapes and the politics of spectacle, Epilogue, References, Index.