Stories of Oprah

by Cotten, Trystan T.

• ISBN13: 9781604734072
• ISBN10: 1604734078
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-11
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi

Summary

Stories of Oprahis a collection of essays that explores Oprah Winfrey's broad reach as an industry and media brand. Contributors analyze a number of topics touching on the ways in which her cultural output shapes contemporary America. The volume examines how Oprah has fashioned a persona—which emphasizes her rural, poverty-stricken roots over other factors—that helps her popularize her unique blend of New Age spirituality, neoliberal politics, and African American preaching. She packages New Age spirituality through the rhetoric of race, gender, and the black preacher tradition. Oprah's Book Club has reshaped literary publishing, bringing Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy to a broad number of readers. Her brand extends worldwide through the internet. In this volume writers analyze her positions on teen sexuality, gender, race, and politics, and the impact of Winfrey's confessional mode on mainstream television news.The book also addresses twenty-first-century issues, showing Winfrey's influence on how Americans and Europeans responded to 9/11, and how Harpo Productions created a deracialized film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's classic novelTheir Eyes Were Watching Godin 2005. Throughout,Stories of Oprahchallenges readers to reflect on how Oprah the Industry has reshaped America's culture, history, and politics.

Author Biography

Trystan T. Cotten is assistant professor of African American studies at California State University, Stanislaus. With Christa Davis Acampora, Cotten edited Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and African American and Native Women's Writings and (Un)Making Race, Re-making Soul; Transforming Aesthetics and the Practice of Freedom. Kimberly Springer is senior lecturer in American studies at King's College London. She is the author of Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 and editor of Still Lifting, Still Climbing: Contemporary African American Women's Activism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Delineating the Contours of the Oprah Culture Industry	p. vii
Oprah the Woman, Oprah the Empire
Beginnings with O	p. 3
"I'm Everywoman": Oprah Winfrey and Feminist Identification	p. 19
New Age Soul: The Gendered Translation of New Age Spirituality on The Oprah Winfrey Show	p. 33
Contesting the Oprah Experts
Post[ed]structuralism?: Oprah's Message Boards, Soul Stories, and the Everyday Lives of Women	p. 51
Oprah para Mujeres Chicanas: A Survey of the Impact of Oprah's Message on Chicanas	p. 65
Confessions from At-Risk Teens: Abstinence, the Social Construction of Promiscuity, and The Oprah Winfrey Show	p. 85
Oprah Goes to Africa: Philanthropic Consumption and Political (Dis)Engagement	p. 99
The Oprahfication of Media
Oprah and the New News	p. 115
The Oprahfication of 9/11 September 11, the War in Iraq, and The Oprah Winfrey Show	p. 131
From the Nobel to Oprah Toni Morrison, Body Politics, and Oprah's Book Club	p. 145
Lost in Translation Irony and Contradiction in Harpo's Production of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God	p. 161
Contributors	p. 179
Index	p. 183
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