Overview

Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was a dancer, singer, actress, author, politician, militant, and philanthropist, whose images and cultural legacy have survived beyond the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Neither an exercise in postmodern deconstruction nor simple biography, Josephine Baker in Art and Life presents a critical cultural study of the life and art of the Franco-American performer whose appearances as the savage dancer Fatou shocked the world. Although the study remains firmly anchored in Josephine Baker’s life and times, presenting and challenging carefully researched biographical facts, it also offers in-depth analyses of the images that she constructed and advanced. Bennetta Jules-Rosette explores Baker’s far-ranging and dynamic career from a sociological and cultural perspective, using the tools of sociosemiotics to excavate the narratives, images, and representations that trace the story of her life and fit together as a cultural production.

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9780252074127

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Reviews

Baker enthusiasts will be grateful for Jules-Rosette's challenges to other studies of Baker's life and legend... It deserves a wide general readership and a significant place in the canon of Franco-American cultural studies and twentieth century French and American history. --Women's Review of Books

Mentioned in Style Magazine, March 2009

Author Information

Bennetta Jules-Rosette is a professor of sociology and the director of African and African-American Studies at the University of California, San Diego.  She is the author of a number of books including Black Paris,African Apostles, and The Messages of Tourist Art.

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