Rachel Fabre is a PhD student, and her thesis is being supervised by Lucie Alexis and Claire Blandin. Her research focuses on the work of reality TV participants. Through the lens of a socio-history of the participants profession, the aim is to examine the boundaries of labor and wage labor, since reality TV serves as a form of remuneration for the performance of gender, race, and class. We will therefore examine how, as the “reality TV” genre evolves, these norms are shaped, reinterpreted, and leveraged through this work of self-presentation. Thus, the objective will be to understand how the expansion of the television sphere and the expansion of the commercial sphere toward affective capitalism intersect within the programs and the labor required to produce it.
Publications
Fabre, R. (2024) “‘Today my mother told me I was dressed like a boy’,” Gender, Education, and Training [Online], 8 | 2024, published online on December 1, 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/gef/2459 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/131dc
Fabre, R. (2026), “Maxime Cervulle, Sarah Lécossais, The Color of Roles: Reflecting on the Racial Division of Labor in Acting,” Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication [Online], 31 | 2026, published online on March 6, 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/18687 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15v5k
Fabre, R. (2025), “Muriel Mille, The Work of Fiction: Behind the Scenes of a TV Series,” Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication [Online], 30 | 2025, published online on September 15, 2025, URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/17255 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/154eg
Scientific presentation at an international conference
Fabre, R. (2025) Being a Reality Show Contestant: Emotional Labor on Self and Others. Pop Culture Conference “Reading Reality TV,” DePaul University, Chicago.
Fabre, R. (2024) Performance as Work: Romantic Relationships as an Economic and Symbolic Resource in Reality TV About Collective Life. International Symposium “Love Is Blind”? Love, Media, and Popular Cultures from 1950 to the Present, ENS Lyon, February 12–13, 2024.