What does a Black burlesque star have to do with some of the most enduring and passionate ideas in modern aesthetic theory? Josephine Baker emerges in this previously untold story as a principal figure in the drama behind the making of Euro-American modernism. Instead of seeing her nude performances as a primitivist given, the author argues that Baker’s skin was central to heat...(展开全部)

A wonderfully rich and evocative biography which tells the extraordinary story of one of the most remarkable female lives of modern Josephine Bonaparte. One of the most potent icons of female sexuality, Josephine has largely been reduced to an empty cipher, the butt of one of the oldest jokes around. Hitherto, her life has been portrayed almost entirely in connection with Napol...(展开全部)

Through the figure of Josephine Baker, Second Skin tells the story of an unexpected yet enduring intimacy between the invention of a modernist style and the theatricalization of black skin at the turn of the twentieth century. Stepping outside of the platitudes surrounding this iconic figure, Anne A. Cheng argues that Baker's famous nakedness must be understood within larger ph...(展开全部)