Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham

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.