On Racial Icons

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.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter One:  “I Am Trayvon Martin”: The Boy who Became an IconChapter Two:  Democracy’s Promise: The Black Political Leader as IconChapter Three: Giving Face: Diana Ross and the Black Celebrity as IconChapter Four: The Black Athlete: Racial Precarity and the American Sports IconCodaIndexAbout the Author

"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) Nicole R. Fleetwood calls her latest book "an act of love." But readers may end up referring to it as tough love as Fleetwoodoffers a searing investigation into America's fixation on black images from President Obama to a living legend of tennis, Serena Williams. With the author's definition of 'racial icons' as "an idolized image or figure, that is simultaneously shrouded in the legacies of U.S. racism and its devaluing of black life," the book aims to unpack the multiple implications of black images both seen and unseen. < Read the nterview at: http://huff.to/1hvYVwM > - Peter 'Souleo' Wright (Huffington Post) "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) “An innovative and dynamic study of blackness, iconicity, and visual culture. It is the conceptual arc of the book –an accruing examination of the meanings of the racial icon-that makes this study so effective.  Fleetwood’s focus of visual culture as public culture makes On Racial Icons an extraordinary resource for the interdisciplinary teaching and study of African American studies, American studies, visual culture studies, and media studies.”(ALH Review) Nicole R. Fleetwood calls her latest book "an act of love." But readers may end up referring to it as tough love as Fleetwoodoffers a searing investigation into America's fixation on black images from President Obama to a living legend of tennis, Serena Williams. With the author's definition of 'racial icons' as "an idolized image or figure, that is simultaneously shrouded in the legacies of U.S. racism and its devaluing of black life," the book aims to unpack the multiple implications of black images both seen and unseen. < Read the nterview at: http://huff.to/1hvYVwM > - Peter 'Souleo' Wright (Huffington Post) "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) "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) An innovative and dynamic study of blackness, iconicity, and visual culture. It is the conceptual arc of the book –an accruing examination of the meanings of the racial icon-that makes this study so effective.  Fleetwood’s focus of visual culture as public culture makes On Racial Icons an extraordinary resource for the interdisciplinary teaching and study of African American studies, American studies, visual culture studies, and media studies. (ALH Review)