Second Skin - Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface

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.

List of contents

• Preface to the New Edition


• 1 Her Own Skin


• 2 In the Museum


• 3 Skins, Tattoos, and the Lure of the Surface


• 4 What Bananas Say


• 5 Housing Baker, Dressing Loos


• 6 Radiant Bodies, Dark Cities


• 7 The Woman with the Golden Skin


• 8 All That Glitters Is Not Gold (or, Dirty Professors)


• 9 Ethical Looking


• 10 Back to the Museum


• List of Illustrations


• Notes


• Works Cited


• Index

About the author

Anne Anlin Cheng is Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University and the author of The Melancholy of Race: Assimilation, Psychoanalysis, and Hidden Grief and Ornamentalism.

Summary

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 philosophic and aesthetic debates about, and desire for, 'pure surface' that crystallized at the convergence of modern art, architecture, machinery, and philosophy. Through Cheng's analysis, Baker emerges as a central artist whose work engages with and impacts various modes of modernist display such as film, photography, art, and even the modern house.

Additional text

Anne Cheng's brilliant new book, Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface, asks to be undressed. . . . [I]f one can't get inside Baker, one can move all around her, and critical movement

Product details

• Authors: Cheng, Anne Anlin Cheng, Anne Anlin (Professor of English Cheng, Cheng Anne Anlin
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 19.11.2023
• EAN: 9780197748381
• ISBN: 978-0-19-774838-1
• No. of pages: 216
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 217 mm x 19 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; EDUCATION / General, Television, ART / General, ARCHITECTURE / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), Films, cinema, Film, TV & radio, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies, HISTORY / African American & Black, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American & Black