November 4, 2008 ushered in a historic moment: Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected the forty-fourth President of the United States of America. In The Obama Effect, editors Heather E. Harris, Kimberly R. Moffitt, and Catherine R. Squires bring together works that place Barack Obama’s candidacy and victory in the context of the American experience with race and the media. Following Obama’s victory, optimists claimed that the campaign signaled the arrival of an era of postracism and postfeminism in the United States. This collection of essays, all presented at a national conference to discuss the meaning and impact of the nomination of the first presidential candidate of African descent, remind the reader that reaching a point in U.S. history where a biracial man could be deemed ’electable’ is part of a still-ongoing struggle. It resists the temptation to dismiss the uncertainty, hope, and fear that characterized the events and discourse of the two-year primary and general election cycle and brings together multidisciplinary approaches to assessing ’the Obama effect’ on public discourse and participation. This volume provides readers with a means for recalling and mapping out the enduring issues that erupted during the campaign—issues that will continue to shape how our society views itself and President Obama in the coming years.
Innehållsförteckning
List of Figures
Preface
Desiree Cooper
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Catherine Squires, Heather Harris, and Kimberly Moffitt
Section I: Rhetoric
1. White Males Lose Presidency for First Time: Exposing the Power of Whiteness through Obama’s Victory
Dina Gavrilos
2. Hermeneutical Rhetoric and Progressive Change: Barack Obama’s American Exceptionalism
James T. Petre
3. Ghosts and Gaps: A Rhetorical Examination of Temporality and Spatial Metaphors in Barack Obama’s ’A More Perfect Union’
Sarah Mc Caffrey
Section II: New Media
4. Media Politics 2.0: An Obama Effect
Michael Cheney and Crytal Olsen
5. The Webbed Message: Re-Visioning the American Dream
Heather E. Harris
6. The Resonant Message and the Powerful New Media: An Analysis of the Obama Presidential Campaign
Qingwen Dong, Kenneth D. Day, and Raman Deol
7. Beyond the Candidate: Obama, You Tube, and (My) Asian-ness
Konrad Ng
Section III: Identities
8. Post-Soul President: Dreams from My Father and the Post-Soul Aesthetic
Bertram D. Ashe
9. ’Let Us Not Falter Before Our Complexity’: Barack Obama and the Legacy of Ralph Ellison
M. Cooper Harriss
10. The Obama Effect on American Discourse about Racial Identity: Dreams from My Father (and Mother), Barack Obama’s Search for Self
Suzanne W. Jones
11. Our First Unisex President? Obama, Critical Race Theory, and Masculinities Studies
Frank Rudy Cooper
Section IV: Publics
12. Oprah and Obama: Theorizing Celebrity Endorsementin U.S. Politics
Rebecca A. Kuehl
13. The Obama Mass: Barack Obama, Image, and Fear of the Crowd
Robert Spicer
14. Mothers Out to Change U.S. Politics: Obama Mamas Involved and Engaged
Grace J. Yoo, Emily H. Zimmerman, and Katherine Preston
Section V: Representations
15. For the Love of Obama: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Relation
Aimee Carillo Rowe
16. Framing a First Lady: Media Coverage of Michelle Obama’s Role in the 2008 Presidential Election
Kimberly R. Moffitt
17. The Feminist (?) Hero versus the Black Messiah: Contesting Gender and Race in the 2008 Democratic Primary
Enid Lynette Logan
Epilogue
Konrad Ng
List of Contributors
Index
Om författaren
Heather E. Harris is Associate Professor of Business Communication at Stevenson University.
Kimberly R. Moffitt is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is the coeditor (with Regina E. Spellers) of
Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/ Body Politics in Africana Communities.
Catherine R. Squires is John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity, and Equality at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of
Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America, also published by SUNY Press, and
African Americans and the Media.
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