During the early 20th century, Western audiences wanted spectacle. They couldn’t get enough of so-called “exotic” performances—female dancers with bare flesh draped in jewels, moving with sensuous rhythms. But it wasn’t just about the dance. It was about the story, the illusion, the fantasy. Audiences craved the escape, the thrill of something different, the titillating…
Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History by Susanna Lee, as published in The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, in March 2023. Susanna Lee’s Detectives in the Shadows is an incisive, entertaining jaunt through the hard-boiled genre from its pulp-fiction origins to the present. Lee, Professor and Chair of the Department of French…
The following is adapted from the introduction to my book about Salomania, Sex, Art, And Salome: Historical Photographs of a Princess, Dancer, Stripper, and Feminist Inspiration. Check out the book for more detail, including over 130 historical photographs. I spent many years working with historical documents at the Library of Congress and other cultural heritage…