Tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis through her evolving public persona, from campaign wife to First Lady to fallen idol to treasured national icon When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today. Drawing on a range of sources- from articles penned for the women's pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines and film- Our Jackie evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her very public life. Jackie's interactions with and framing by the American media reflect the changing attitudes toward American womanhood. Over the course of four decades, Jackie was alternatively praised for her service to others, and pilloried for her perceived self-interest. In Our Jackie, Karen M. Dunak argues that whether she was portrayed as a campaign wife, a loyal widow, a selfish jetsetter, or a mature career woman, the history of Jackie's highly publicized life demonstrates the ways in which news, entertainment, politics, and celebrity evolved and intertwined over the second half of the twentieth century. Examining the intimate chronicles of this famous First Lady's life, Our Jackie suggests that media coverage of this enigmatic public figure revealed as much about the prevailing views of women in America- how they should behave and whom they should serve- as it did about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as an individual.
Karen M. Dunak is Professor and Arthur G. and Eloise Barnes Cole Chair of American History in the Department of History at Muskingum University. She is the author of As Long As We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America.
""Examining media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis from the 1950s to the 1990s, Dunak provides important insights into changing gender role expectations during the second half of the American Century. Along the way, she also offers a fresh perspective on Onassis's significance to United States history."" -- Katherine Jellison, author of It's Our Day: America's Love Affair with the White Wedding, 1945-2005 "Karen Dunak provides an essential and eye-opening perspective on the making of an American icon. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Our Jackie explains how the Kennedy family's political and media savviness combined with press assumptions about womanhood to cultivate a constantly evolving public obsession with Jacqueline Kennedy that has lasted decades. This is media history at its finest." -- Kathryn Cramer Brownell, author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News
