Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface

by Anne Anlin Cheng

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.

216 pages, Hardcover

Published December 5, 2023

About the author

Anne Anlin Cheng is Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University. She specializes in twentieth-century literature and visual culture. She received her B.A. in English and Creative Writing at Princeton, her Masters in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University, and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of California at Berkeley. She teaches a wide range of courses in the areas of comparative race studies, aesthetic theory, psychoanalytic theory, literary criticism, law, film and gender studies, poetry and poetics.