During the spring semester, I took a graduate seminar in the School of Nursing called “Histoire socioculturelle du corps” (or the Sociocultural History of the Body). As the final assignment for this course, I wrote a paper on “the presidential body” following President Trump’s Bible Photo-op in early June. The paper sits at the intersection of public relations and political communication. Public relations is a little outside of my wheelhouse, but I enjoyed reading for and writing the paper.

This critical essay (which you can read on my blog) examines how the president's body (as an individual) and the presidential body (as an institution) have been constructed through the use of photography, publicity, and force. To do this, this paper first examines how the physical body of the president has been positioned and represented in photo opportunities (hereinafter referred to as photo-ops) and public relations events to emphasize or minimize certain characteristics. Then, the presidential body (as an institution) is examined to shed light into how it participates in the positioning of the president’s body and how it has been perceived as a result of specific photo-ops and publicity moments.

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