Jeff Smith (4) (1958–)
Autor de The Presidents We Imagine: Two Centuries of White House Fictions on the Page, on the Stage, Onscreen, and Online (Studies in American Thought and Culture)
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Sobre El Autor
"Especially timely in an era when media image-mongering increasingly shapes presidential politics." -Paul S. Boyer, series editor Jeff Smith is assistant professor at the Center for Management Communication in the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He has been a mostrar más political reporter, commentator, and television news consultant, a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute, and the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships for the study and teaching of American culture. mostrar menos
Obras de Jeff Smith
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre legal
- Smith, Jeffrey Alan
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1958
- Género
- male
- Educación
- Valparaiso University (BA, English)
University of Chicago (MA, English Language and Literature)
University of California, Los Angeles (MFA)
University of Chicago (PhD, English Language and Literature) - Ocupaciones
- professor
- Organizaciones
- Masaryk University
- Premios y honores
- Fulbright Lecturer
Miembros
Reseñas
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Miembros
- 10
- Popularidad
- #908,816
- Valoración
- 2.0
- Reseñas
- 1
- ISBNs
- 665
- Idiomas
- 18
Smith begins by analyzing one of the key models for the presidency: the “Patriot King”, an executive who “would rule above party, revive the forgotten spirit of the constitution, and make ‘public virtue and real capacity’ once again the basis of political power.”(16) This ideal, along with those drawn from the history of the Roman Republic, served to inform the thinking of the delegates who drafted the Constitution that created the office. For the first century of the nation’s existence, the image of the presidency was closely tied to the men who actually held the office – most notably George Washington, but also Andrew Jackson and later Abraham Lincoln. By the end of the 19th century, however, fictional presidents began appearing in print and on stage, allowing writers to define and redefine the presidency in very different ways. By the middle of the 20th century, the fictional depictions of the presidency had expanded to the screen as well, often serving as a Rorschach test of the issues and anxieties of the age. Smith concludes with a chapter that looks at how this dynamic between the presidency and our expectations of this played out on September 11, 2001, a reflection of how “the realities to be represented or fictively manipulated are, themselves, already permeated by fictions.”(287)
Insightful and informative, Smith’s book is an enlightening look at the evolving image of the American presidency in the national imagination. His analysis of the books, plays, films, and television shows is perceptive and nicely tied to the times in which they were created. Yet his text is pockmarked with factual errors which, while minor, raise doubts as to just how closely he examined the works he analyzes, while the inclusion of some works (such as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, a landmark film about American politics but one in which the presidency is absent) seem a poor use of limited space. Overall, though, the strengths of Smith’s work outweigh its weaknesses; this is a good book for anyone interested in understanding how Americans have viewed the presidency and how these views have helped shape the institution.… (más)