TY - JOUR
T1 - Michelle Obama, Mom-in-Chief
T2 - The Racialized Rhetorical Contexts of Maternity
AU - Hayden, Sara
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Organization for Research on Women and Communication.
PY - 2017/1/2
Y1 - 2017/1/2
N2 - Directly following her husband’s 2008 election, Michelle Obama assumed the moniker “mom-in-chief,” and in her tenure as first lady she has extended this role to “mother” the children of the nation through her policy choices. Noting her Ivy League education and her prior work as a high-powered attorney, many White feminists decried Obama’s maternal focus. Black feminists, however, rejected those critiques, pointing to the progressive potential of Obama’s maternal persona. In this article, I explain these divergent perspectives by examining Obama’s maternal first lady rhetoric through an expansive understanding of context. Specifically, I argue that the varied readings of Obama’s maternal performances reflect the racialized rhetorical contexts within which she was acting and through which audience members understood her. This analysis points to the importance of investigating the rhetorical contexts within which both audience members and rhetors circulate and participate.
AB - Directly following her husband’s 2008 election, Michelle Obama assumed the moniker “mom-in-chief,” and in her tenure as first lady she has extended this role to “mother” the children of the nation through her policy choices. Noting her Ivy League education and her prior work as a high-powered attorney, many White feminists decried Obama’s maternal focus. Black feminists, however, rejected those critiques, pointing to the progressive potential of Obama’s maternal persona. In this article, I explain these divergent perspectives by examining Obama’s maternal first lady rhetoric through an expansive understanding of context. Specifically, I argue that the varied readings of Obama’s maternal performances reflect the racialized rhetorical contexts within which she was acting and through which audience members understood her. This analysis points to the importance of investigating the rhetorical contexts within which both audience members and rhetors circulate and participate.
KW - African American maternity
KW - Michelle Obama
KW - intensive mothering
KW - maternal rhetoric
KW - polysemy
KW - rhetorical context
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84978945313&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07491409.2016.1182095
DO - 10.1080/07491409.2016.1182095
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978945313
SN - 0749-1409
VL - 40
SP - 11
EP - 28
JO - Women's Studies in Communication
JF - Women's Studies in Communication
IS - 1
ER -