This volume examines the ways in which the media, including film, television, social media, and gaming, has constructed and sustained a narrative of white supremacy that has entered mainstream American discourse.
With chapters by today’s preeminent critical race scholars, the book looks in particular at the ways media institutions have circulated white supremacist ideology across a wide range of platforms and texts that have had significant impact on shaping our current polarized and racialized social and political landscape. Systematically scrutinizing every media platform, this volume provides readers with an understanding of the ways in which media has provided institutional support for white supremacist ideology, and presents them with the means to examine and analyze the persistence of these narratives within our racial discourse, thus offering the necessary knowledge to challenge and transform these racially divisive and destructive narratives.
White Supremacy and the American Media will be of interest not only to scholars working in critical race studies and popular culture in the United States, but also to those working in the fields of Film and Television Studies, Sociology, Geography, Art History, Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Popular Culture, and Media Studies.
1. White Supremacy and the American Media; Part I: Theories of White Supremacy and the Media; 2. Theorizing White Nationalism: Past, Present, and Future; 3. The Soul of White Nationalism in the American Body Politic: Birtherism, “Make America Great Again”, and Immigration; 4. The Racial Folly of White Liberals in Trump’s America and Beyond; Part II: White Supremacy and Film; 5. The Best of Enemies and BlacKkKlansman: Racial Dog Whistles, Whiteness, and a Sympathetic Klan; 6. Knives Out and the End of Racial Politics; 7. What Happened to the Green Book? The Disappearing Act of Black Agency and Other White Framings in Green Book; 8. American Sniper: Constructing a White Nationalist Hero; Part III: White Supremacy and Television; 9. White Nationalism and the Spectre of the Refugee; 10. “Keep it off the Field”: The Mediatized Sports Stadium as White Space; 11. Whiteness and the Ambiguous Racial Politics of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Part IV: White Supremacy, Social Media, and Gaming; 12. Stephen King’s Political Monsters; 13. Playing at Racism: White Supremacist Recruitment in Online Video Game Culture; 14. White Female Pain: Cis White Women and Digital Masculine Rhetoric
Sarah D. Nilsen is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, USA. Her current book project is a cultural history of the NRA’s relationship with Hollywood. Sarah E. Turner is Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Vermont, USA. Her current project explores the dialogue amongst the work of Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Kara Walker.
