Moral Leaders

In 1980, those voices calling for moral guidance in the United States could no longer be ignored. Yet from what fiber was this demand for a »moral leader« knitted? Felix Kramer restructures messages and media for the contemporary history of the U.S. and locates a crucial driving force for discursive change in a dynamic television public. Based on evening news from ABC, CBS, and NBC, it depicts the struggles in an intersectional gender ordering, from different liberation movements of the late 1960s to an alleged crisis of U.S. masculinity to the growing influence of the white evangelical movement. His study shows how politicians became preacher figures while cultural conflicts of resource distribution in the 1980s intensified simultaneously.

Felix Krämer arbeitet als Postdoktorand am DFG-Graduiertenkolleg 1599 »Dynamiken von Raum und Geschlecht« in Kassel und Göttingen. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen in der Geschichte Nordamerikas, der Diskursanalyse von Medien und den Gender Studies.