Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: melodrama, liminality, and "post"-politics: neo-liberal racial and gender formation in the new millennium -- Splitting Condi(licious): Condoleezza Rice and melodramas of "closeness" in U.S. national community formation -- Unpacking President Barack Obama's "improbable story": a case study of gender, race, class, and melodrama in electoral politics -- Diary of a mad Black(wo)man: Tyler Perry, wounded masculinity, and post-feminist, postracial melodrama -- The reality of the white male rapist: Black women's rape, melodrama, and U.S.-based American political development -- MeToo? Black women, melodrama, and sexual harassment -- Conclusion: turbulent futures: post-politics as an analytic -- Coda: post-politics in the era of COVID-19.

"From Michelle Obama to Condoleezza Rice, Black women are uniquely scrutinized in the public eye. In Re-Imagining Black Women, Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd explores how Black women--and Blackness more broadly--are understood in our political imagination and often become the subjects of public controversy. Drawing on politics, popular culture, psychoanalysis, and more, Alexander-Floyd examines our conflicting ideas, opinions, and narratives about Black women, showing how they are equally revered and reviled as an embodiment of good and evil, cast either as victims or villains, citizens or outsiders. Ultimately, Alexander-Floyd showcases the complex experiences of Black women as political subjects. At a time of extreme racial tension, Re-Imagining Black Women provides insight into the parts that Black women play, and are expected to play, in politics and popular culture."-- Provided by publisher

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics and co-editor of Black Women in Politics: Demanding Citizenship, Challenging Power, and Seeking Justice.

Print version record.

In English.

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