Editor’s Note: Though by no means exhaustive, this bibliography provides a wide-ranging compilation of Josephine Baker related readings. The works cited here are divided into four categories: critical works explicitly devoted to Baker; biographical and autobiographical writings on and by Baker; a selection of reviews and articles from Baker’s contemporary press; and texts concerning the period and traditions that shaped and were shaped by Josephine Baker.
Critical Studies
Borshuk, Michael. “An Intelligence of the Body: Disruptive Parody through Dance in the Early Performances of Josephine Baker,” eds. Dorothea Fischer-Hornung and Alison D. Goeller, EmBODYing Liberation: The Black Body in American Dance, Forecaast (Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies), Volume 4: 53.
Dalton, Karen C. C. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen through Parisian Eyes,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Summer 1998).
Dayal, Samir. “Blackness as Symptom: Josephine Baker and European Identity,” in Heike Raphael-Hernandez, Blackening Europe: the African American Presence. London: Routledge, 2004.
Dudziak, Mary L. “Josephine Baker, Racial Protest, and the Cold War.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Sep., 1994): 543-570.
Fabre, Michel. “International Beacons of African-American Memory: Alexandre Dumas, père, Henry O. Tanner and Josephine Baker” in Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Mealy Eds. History and Memory in African American Culture. (New York: 1994): 122-129.
Francis, Terri. “Embodied Fictions, Melancholy Migrations: Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Celebrity” MFS, vol. 51.4 (Winter 2005): 824-844.
Fry, Andy. “Du jazz hot a La Créole: Josephine Baker sings Offenbach” Cambridge Opera Journal 16.1 (2004): 43-75.
Gordon, Terri. “Joséphine Baker: Parodie ou Pastiche?,” Francographies, journal of the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d’Amérique, No. Spécial 2, vol. 1 (1999): 141-156.
———. “A ‘Saxophone in Movement’: Josephine Baker and the Music of Dance,” in Jazz Adventures in French Culture, ed. Jacqueline Dutton and Colin Nettelbeck, special issue of Nottingham French Studies 43:1 (Spring 2004): 39-52.
Henderson, Mae G. “Josephine Baker and La Revue Nègre: From Ethnography to Performance,” Text and Performance Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2 (April 2003).
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. Jospehine Baker: in Art and Life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Klein, Jean-Claude. “La Revue nègre,” in Entre deux guerres, ed. by Oliver Barrot and Pascal Ory. Paris: F. Bourin, 1990.
Kraut, Anthea. “Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham,” Theatre Journal 55 (2003).
Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia. Josephine Baker: Image and Icon. St. Louis, Missouri: Reedy Press, 2006.
Martin, Wendy. “Remembering the Jungle: Josephine Baker and Modernist Parody,” in Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, ed. by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Nenno, Nancy. “Femininity, the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin,” in Women in the Metropolis, ed. by Katharina von Ankum. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997.
Biographies and Memoirs
Abtey, Jacques. La Guerre secrète de Joséphine Baker. Paris: Siboney, 1948.
Baker, Jean-Claude and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart. New York: Random House, 1993.
Baker, Josephine and Jo Bouillon, Josephine. Trans. Mariana Fitzpatrick. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
——— and Piet Worms. La Tribu arc-en ciel. Paris: Opera Mundi, 1957.
Bonini, Emmanuel. La Véritable Joséphine Baker. Paris: Pygmalion, 2000.
Haney, Lynn. Naked at the Feast: The Biography of Josephine Baker. London: Robson Books, 1981.
Jules-Rosette, Benetta. Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
O’Connor, Patrick and Bryan Hammond. Josephine Baker. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1988.
Papich, Stephen. Remembering Josephine. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1976.
Rivollet, André. Joséphine Baker: Une vie de toutes les couleurs. Grenoble: B. Arthaud, 1935.
Rose, Phyllis. Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Sauvage, Marcel. Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker. Paris: Dilecta, 2006.
———. Les Voyages et aventures de Joséphine Baker. Paris: Editions Marcel Sheur, 1931.
Wood, Ean. The Josephine Baker Story. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2000.
Contemporary Press
Joséphine Baker vue par la presse française, ed. by Pepito Abatino. Paris: Les Editions Isis, 1931.
Berton, Claude. “Réflexions sur le music-hall,” La Revue de Paris (1 nov 1929): 674.
Cook, Jane. “Josephine Baker Rears and International Family,” New York Times (Oct. 17, 1963): 42.
de Flers, Robert. “La Semaine Dramatique,” Figaro (16 nov 1925).
Georges-Michel, Michel. “Soirée nègre,” Comœdia (28 sept 1925).
Gregorio, Simon. La Rampe (1 nov 1930).
Griffith, Hubert. “Josephine Baker at Home,” London Observer (Oct. 8, 1933).
Hamel, Maurice. “A Mademoiselle Joséphine Baker,” La Rumeur (14 jan 1928).
Hoérée, Arthur. “Le jazz et le disque (essai critique et historique),” L’Edition musical vivante, no. 46 (Dec. 1931): 7-15 [in Martin and Roueff, 2002 (295)].
Kessler, Harry Graf. Tagebücher 1918-1937 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1961), entry for February 26, 1926, p. 482. Quoted in translation in Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1993): 171.
Levinson, André. “‘Loin du bal:’ Joséphine sifflée Ð Blanc et noir,” Comœdia (7 déc 1925).
———. “Paris ou New-York? Douglas. La Vénus noire,” Comœdia (12 oct 1925).
Missaire, Gérard Journal des Débats (9 oct 1930).
d’Olon, Phillipe. “Au Champs-Elysées Music-Hall: Damia, Gabaroche, La Revue Nègre,” Le Soir (1 nov 1925).
de Pawlowski, G. Le Journal (9 oct 1930).
Reed, Ishmael. “Remembering Josephine, by Stephen Papich,” New York Times Book Review (December 12, 1972): 2.
de Régnier, Pierre. “Aux Champs-Elysées: La Revue Nègre,” Candide (12 nov 1925).
Rivollet, Andre. “Du Jazz Hot à ‘La Créole,'” conférence de M. André Rivollet, faites le 21 mars 1935, Conferencia (1 juillet 1935): 102.
Saint-Bonnet, Georges. “Portrait du Soir: Joséphine Baker,” Le Soir (18 mars 1928).
Schaeffner, André and André Cœuroy, “Enquête sur le jazz band,” Paris-Midi (8 mai-1 juillet 1925) [in Martin and Roueff, 2002 (182)].
Schmitt, Georges. “Joséphine Baker passant à Paris nous dit…,” Volonté (20 avril 1929).
Sissle, Noble. “How Jo Baker Got Started,” Negro Digest 10 (August 1951): 17, 18.
Vuillemin, Louis. “Concerts métèques…,” Courrier musical (1 janvier 1923) [in Martin and Roueff, 2002 (170)].
General
Archer-Shaw, Petrine. Negrophilia: avant-garde Paris and black culture in the 1920s. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Blake, Jody. “‘Jazz-band Dada’: L’afro-américanisme dans le Paris de l’entre-deux-guerres,” Revue de L’Art, 118: 4 (1997).
———. Le tumulte noir: modernist art and popular entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Boittin, Jennifer. “Soleil Noir: Race, Gender and Colonialism in Interwar Paris”, PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2005.
Brooks, Daphne A. Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2006.
Edwards, Brent Hayes. Practicing Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Ezra, Elizabeth. The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840-1980. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Flanner, Janet. Paris was Yesterday 1925-1939. New York: Popular Library, 1972.
Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Gilroy, Paul. “…to be real”: The dissident forms of black expressive culture,” in Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance (ed.) Catherine Ugwu. London and Seattle: Bay Press, 1995.
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts. Praeger Publishers, 1996.
Haskins, James. Black Dance in America: A History Through Its People. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
Martin, Denis-Constant and Olivier Roueff. La France du jazz: Musique, modernité et identité dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Marseille: Ed. Parenthèses, 2002.
Lemke, Sieglinde. Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1998.
Levinson, André. “The Negro Dance: Under European Eyes,” in André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties, ed. by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola. Hannover and London: University Press of New England, 1991.
McCarren, Felicia. Dancing Machines: Choreographies of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Shack, William A. Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001.
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Black Venus: Sexualized savages, primal fears, and primitive narratives in French. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
Stearns, Marshall and Jean. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer Books, 1968.
Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996.
