Nicole R. Fleetwood

On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination - Pinpoints Nicole R. Fleetwood New edition

Marc Notes: This volume explores visual culture and race in the United States, focusing in particular on the significance of photography to document black public life. It examines America's fascination with representing and seeing race in a myriad of contexts as emblematic of national and racial progress at best, or as a gauge of a collective racial wound. Table of Contents: Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: I Am Trayvon Martin: The Boy who Became an Icon Chapter Two: Democracy s Promise: The Black Political Leader as Icon Chapter Three: Giving Face: Diana Ross and the Black Celebrity as Icon Chapter Four: The Black Athlete: Racial Precarity and the American Sports Icon Coda Index About the Author"Review Quotes: "Nicole Fleetwood s astute study makes transparent the power of images and strengthens our understanding as to how significant black figures transformed our imaginary as a fixed construction based on media perceptions. An impressive read!"--Deborah Willis"New York University" (04/08/2015)"Biographical Note: NICOLE R. FLEETWOOD is the director of the Institute for Research on Women and an associate professor of American Studies at Rutgers University. She specializes in visual culture and media studies, black cultural studies, and gender theory. She is the author of the award-winning book "Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness.""Review Quotes: "Nicole Fleetwood's astute study makes transparent the power of images and strengthens our understanding as to how significant black figures transformed our imaginary as a fixed construction based on media perceptions. An impressive read!"--Deborah Willis"New York University" (04/08/2015) Review Quotes: "With "On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination," Nicole Fleetwood examines the emotional work and cultural meanings of black icons especially the place of veneration, condescension, celebrity, and commodification in the production of photographic images of Barack Obama, Diana Ross, Trayvon Martin, Serena Williams, and LeBron James. Accessible and concise, yet sensitive and insightful, Fleetwood invites us to dwell in the spaces where black iconic images circulate, to feel the hopes they gather, to understand the conflicts they engender, and above all to appreciate the implications they suggest for how we see ourselves."--Herman Gray"University of California, Santa Cruz" (04/14/2015) Publisher Marketing: What meaning does the American public attach to images of key black political, social, and cultural figures? Considering photography s role as a means of documenting historical progress, what is the representational currency of these images? Howdo racial icons signify ? Nicole R. Fleetwood s answers to these questions will change the way you think about the next photograph that you see depicting a racial event, black celebrity, or public figure. In" On Racial Icons," Fleetwood focuses a sustained look on photography in documenting black public life, exploring the ways in which iconic images function as celebrations of national and racial progress at times or as a gauge of collective racial wounds in moments of crisis. Offering an overview of photography s ability to capture shifting race relations, Fleetwood spotlights in each chapter a different set of iconic images in key sectors of public life. She considers flash points of racialized violence in photographs of Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till; the political, aesthetic, and cultural shifts marked by the rise of pop stars such as Diana Ross; and the power and precarity of such black sports icons as Serena Williams and LeBron James; and she does not miss Barack Obama and his family along the way. "On Racial Icons" is an eye-opener in every sense of the phrase."