Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780252074127)

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.

Author: Bennetta Jules-Rosette
ISBN-10: 0252074122
ISBN-13: 9780252074127
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 02/22/2007
Pages: 392
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 8.98h x 6.53w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/15/2007 pg. 124
Booklist 02/01/2007 pg. 26
New York Times 06/03/2007 pg. 40
Reference and Research Bk News 05/01/2007 pg. 84
Publishers Weekly 01/01/2007