Authenticating Whiteness

Rachel E. Dubrofsky is associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. Her work is rooted in a critical cultural studies tradition with a focus on critical race, feminist media, and critical surveillance studies, with a recurring focus on authenticity and whiteness. Dubrofsky is regularly interviewed by the media for her expertise and has been quoted in, among others, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, TIME, Bitch Media, Salon.com, USA Today, and The Daily Beast. She is author of The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" and coeditor of Feminist Surveillance Studies. Her work has appeared in such publications as Critical Studies in Media Communication; Communication, Culture & Critique; Feminist Media Studies; and Television and New Media.

Dubrofsky covers quite a lot of ground in under 200 pages, but her interdisciplinary work and supporting evidence is laid out clearly to all readers. Dubrofsky defines many of her terms and contextualizes how she will be using them for her project, which is helpful given the way various fields engage with research and methodology. This book is intended to be part of a broader project that other scholars will hopefully join; Dubrofsky is clear that her work is only the beginning of a much larger conversation.--Morgan Foster "Journal of Popular Culture" By conducting critical textual analysis on various popular media representation, such as news articles, music videos, reality TV series, and selfies on social media, Dubrofsky provides an insightful understanding of how mediated authenticity and whiteness are related. . . . Please be prepared for the intense notetaking with highlighters and frequent nodding-along when you read this well-written, empirically solid, and insightful book, just as I did.--Qian Huang "Surveillance & Society" [A]ntiracist work requires White people to let go of authenticity, become uncomfortable and uneasy, and embrace the messiness of identity within antiracist spaces. . . . These conversations are not straightforward, and as Dubrofsky aptly articulates, often result in Whiteness taking up space that decenters Black activism, experience, and autonomy. So while antiracism is a slippery concept for White people, Dubrofsky restates how necessary it is to confront the incomplete tensions between comfort and freedom of Whiteness in given spaces if we are to do this work meaningfully.--Sim Gill "International Journal of Communication" The topics are attention-getting. . . . [This] book would be a good addition to libraries with collections related to communication studies, media studies, and race relations.--Allison Faix "The Southeastern Librarian" In this book, Rachel Dubrofsky takes an innovative and expansive approach to the relationship between authenticity and whiteness. She positions her compelling argument that authenticity works as a strategy of whiteness within a range of media and popular culture, from Taylor Swift to Miley Cyrus, from reality television to Twitter, from Karen to Trump. Her detailed and careful analyses on the varied alliances of whiteness with authenticity makes a substantial contribution to conversations on the roles of media and popular culture, affect, and surveillance in understanding the powerful relationship between authenticity and whiteness.--Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of Authentic(TM) The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture This book unearths how authenticity emerges as a powerful social force through various mediated discourses . . . . Authenticating Whiteness is a must read for scholars and students in media studies, communication, and critical cultural studies. Highly recommended.--W. Alvarez "CHOICE" Authenticating Whiteness is an important exploration of the fragile nature of whiteness in its contemporary sociopolitical habitat. In examining how whiteness is unapologetically shape-shifting, self-protective, and often insecure, Rachel Dubrofsky issues a compelling challenge we won't soon forget in this masterful critical-theoretic volume.--Ronald L. Jackson II, author of Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media Authenticating Whiteness offers a new lens through which to understand representations of everyday whiteness. It powerfully discusses how whiteness often constructs itself as 'authentic' and how authenticity functions as a strategy of whiteness. Focusing on media and celebrity culture, including representations of white femininity, this book has a lot to offer to scholars of race, whiteness, and media. This is a highly valuable contribution to the literature on media representations of whiteness and particularly white femininity.--Raka Shome, author of Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture