Part I. Icons and the struggle over meaning -- 'Just like you', but not like us : staging national belonging, multiracial femininity, and collective memory in the American Girl family / Karina Eileraas -- Behind the brown mask : Joe Louis' face and the construction of racial mythologies / Marcy S. Sacks -- LeBron James and the web of discourse : iconic sports figures and semantic struggles / Michael Phillips -- Part II. Appropriating iconic figures -- O Superman : the many faces of the Man of Steel / Bradley Bailey -- Thirty are better than one : Marilyn Monroe and the performance of Americanness / Susanne Hamscha -- Queering cowboys, queering futurity : the re/construction of American cowboy masculinity / Leopold Lippert -- Iconizing radical change : how Gary Cooper led Poland to freedom / Jolanta Szymkowska-Bartyzel and Part III. The mutability and abstraction of iconic figures -- The embodiment of a nation : the iconicity of Uncle Sam and the construction of a conflicted national identity / Louis J. Kern -- Lois Lane : the making of a girl reporter / Peter Lee -- War in four colors : the battle between Superman and Captain America for America's hearts and minds during World War II / B. Keith Murphy -- Myth and materiality : the duality of Grace Kelly / Ana Salzberg -- 'Its own special attraction' : meditations on martyrdom and the iconicity of civil rights widows / Brenda Tindal