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.

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 McCaffrey

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, YouTube, 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