Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies and Department of Afro-American Studies. Presented by Ethelene Whitmire, Professor and Department Chair of Afr0-American Studies. Part of the Spring 2022 Lecture Series.
Professor and Provost Sharpley-Whiting’s presentation will explore the evolution of Josephine Baker’s life and career, from her childhood in St. Louis to her activism in France and the United States. The introduction will be led by Professor Ethelene Whitmire.
Josephine Baker
Professor and Provost Sharpley-Whiting is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Vanderbilt University where she directs the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics and chairs the Department of African American Studies. She is also Associate Provost of Academic Advancement at Vanderbilt. A comparative Europeanist and scholar of women, gender, and African Diaspora Studies, she is author/editor of 15 books and three novels, the latest of which include the L’Harmattan French edition, La Vénus hottentote: écrits, 1810 à 1814, suivi des textes inédits; the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Sexualités, identité & corps colonisés: XVe siècle – XXIe siècle, and Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women Expatriates in Jazz-Age Paris and The Autobiography of Ada Bricktop Smith, or Miss Baker Regrets, a 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award Long List nominee and Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015. She is also editor of The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union. Sharpley-Whiting lectures widely in the United States and abroad (the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and Africa) and has offered commentary on a range of issues for Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, C-SPAN2, CBS News, the BBC Live Television, Radio SBS Australia, and Oprah Satellite Radio.
Ethelene Whitmire is Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison affiliated with the departments of German, Nordic, and Slavic+, and Gender & Women’s Studies, and Chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies. She received an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowship and a Lois Roth Endowment grant and was also a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Transnational American Studies.