Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham : Dances in Literature and Cinema

This book investigates African American dancers Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s self-inventions on screen and in writing to map the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. Baker was the first Black woman to enjoy a starring role in mainstream cinema and Dunham was the first Black choreographer to be credited for her screen work. Equally, they were the first well-known African American women to produce multivolume accounts of their lives, and their writings serve as valuable firsthand documents of Black women’s interwar experiences. Why did Baker and Dunham enjoy such groundbreaking literary and cinematic careers? What do such careers tell us about the challenges and opportunities that they encountered as African American women seeking to navigate midcentury geographical and cultural boundaries? Why did they turn to life writing and the screen and on what terms were they able to engage with these mediums as Black women? How did contemporary Black screen audiences receive their work? Where do Baker and Dunham’s films and writings fit into African American literary and cinematic histories and why are they largely absent from these histories? This book investigates these questions. In so doing, it uncovers the cultural significance of Baker and Dunham’s films and writings and interrogates their performances within them to recover their authorship. Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham were the two most acclaimed and commercially successful African American dancers of their era and among the first black women to enjoy international screen careers. Both also produced fascinating memoirs that provided vital insights into their artistic philosophies and choices. However, difficulties in accessing and categorizing their works on the screen and on the page have obscured their contributions to film and literature. Hannah Durkin investigates Baker and Dunham's films and writings to shed new light on their legacies as transatlantic artists and civil rights figures. Their trailblazing dancing and choreography reflected a belief that they could use film to confront racist assumptions while also imagining—within significant confines—new aesthetic possibilities for black women. Their writings, meanwhile, revealed their creative process, engagement with criticism, and the ways each mediated cultural constructions of black women's identities. Durkin pays particular attention to the ways dancing bodies function as ever-changing signifiers and de-stabilizing transmitters of cultural identity. In addition, she offers an overdue appraisal of Baker and Dunham's places in cinematic and literary history.| Cover Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Dancer in Translation: Baker's Coauthored Narratives 2. The Dancer as Translator: Dunham's Ethnographic Memoirs 3. Performing within Primitivism: Baker on the French Silent Screen 4. Cinematic Stardom: Baker and the 1930s French Musical Film 5. Cinematic Segregation: Dunham in World War II Hollywood 6. Navigating Primitivism's Persistent Gaze: Dunham in Postwar European Cinema Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index Back cover | "Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham is a tour-de-force brilliantly analyzing the cinematic depictions in a black Atlantic context. The full implications of the European depictions of these wonderful dancers is teased out through exhaustive attention to dancing techniques, cinematography and the two women's autobiographical writings. A must read for all scholars of African American performance and cultural politics."—Alan Rice, author of Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic "Makes a significant contribution to the field. . . . The dance performances of these artists as recreated onscreen are interpreted and read through the lens of a dance critic who interrogates the dancing body which appropriated diasporic dance techniques over which the artist did not always control."—Charlene B. Regester, African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900–1960 | Hannah Durkin is a lecturer in literature and film at Newcastle University. She is a coeditor of Visualising Slavery: Art Across the African Diaspora . "This project examines the writings and international film careers of Josephine Baker (1906-1975) and Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), the two most critically and commercially successful African American women dancers of the twentieth century. Drawing on previously unexamined films and texts, Hannah Durkin maps the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. By examining the narratives and dance of Baker and Hunham, Durkin is able to shed new light on the ways in which the dancers were received on both sides of the Atlantic and how they engaged personally with dominant critical interpretations of Black performance as crude and innate. The project uncovers their self-reflexive narrative strategies and provides evidence for their path-breaking interventions in cinema as stars and choreographers who believed that they could use film to contest racist frameworks and imagine new aesthetic possibilities for Black women. By analyzing the methods by which these two artists mediated popular constructions of Black women's identities, the investigation interrogates widely held conceptions of authorship and artistic hierarchies. It provides insights into intercultural identity formations by positioning Black women's bodily performances as sites on which historical struggles over cultural meanings have been played out and contested. Finally, by tracing connections between Baker and Dunham's performances and their lifelong fights against racial injustice, Durkin recovers Baker and Durham as key figures in the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements and exposes the transatlantic struggles regarding control over cultural embodiments of Black women in a pre-Civil Rights era"-- Provided by publisher "This project examines the writings and international film careers of Josephine Baker (1906-1975) and Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), the two most critically and commercially successful Black women dancers of the twentieth century. Drawing on previously unexamined films and texts, Hannah Durkin maps the intellectual underpinnings and visual impact of their art. By examining the narratives and dance of Baker and Hunham, Durkin is able to shed new light on the ways in which the dancers were received on both sides of the Atlantic and how they engaged personally with dominant critical interpretations of Black performance as crude and innate. The project uncovers their self-reflexive narrative strategies and provides evidence for their path-breaking interventions in cinema as stars and choreographers who believed that they could use film to contest racist frameworks and imagine new aesthetic possibilities for Black women. By analyzing the methods by which these two artists mediated popular constructions of Black women's identities, the investigation interrogates widely held conceptions of authorship and artistic hierarchies. It provides insights into intercultural identity formations by positioning Black women's bodily performances as sites on which historical struggles over cultural meanings have been played out and contested. Finally, by tracing connections between Baker and Dunham's performances and their lifelong fights against racial injustice, Durkin recovers Baker and Durham as key figures in the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements and exposes the transatlantic struggles regarding control over cultural embodiments of Black women in a pre-Civil Rights era"-- Provided by publisher Baker was the first Black woman to enjoy a starring role in mainstream cinema and Dunham was the first Black choreographer to be credited for her screen work. Equally, they were the first well-known African American women to produce multivolume accounts of their lives, and their writings serve as valuable firsthand documents of Black women's interwar experiences. This book investigates questions surrounding their self-invention, agency and reception. In so doing, it uncovers the cultural significance of Baker and Dunham's films and writings and interrogates their performances within them to recover their authorship