The focus of my research during our immersion experience in Paris was the [American-born black singer, dancer, and actress] Josephine Baker, analyzing not only what she got from the French nation but what she was able to give back.
So profound was the effect of Baker and jazz on the French culture after the 1920s that jazz bars and clubs can still be found across the country. While in Paris I saw several of these clubs, confirming that Jazz is alive and well throughout the City of Light. Even in the metro station at Chatelet-les- Halles, a photo of Josephine Baker is plastered across a billboard, topless to boot.
The influence of jazz on French culture even found its way into my chance encounter with a Parisian at a café down the road from our hostel in Paris. Our conversation in my broken French and his broken English ranged from the national politics of two counties to films.
Then the Frenchman, Christian, began tell-ing me about a recent French documentary on black minstrels and the popular character “Jim Crow” which was the center of such productions; what are the chances that an expatriate myself, would bump into and carry-on a conversation with a Frenchman about the very topic I was researching?
—John Bogucki ’12, from his blog entry while on an immersion experience with Professor Eric Freeze’s Modernity in France and Spain course, focusing on expatriate American writers from the 1920s and 30s.