Transatlantic crossings between Paris and New York

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This study explores how black cultural difference and identity were negotiated among cultural and political organizations in Paris and Harlem. It examines how concepts of black expressive culture and originality were absorbed by the white artistic avant-garde and reflected in primitivist modernist styles. Additionally, it investigates how knowledge of African culture and 'African otherness' was visually represented in French colonial ethnography and art. Focusing on the dynamics of transatlantic cultural exchange, the work analyzes the international transfer of images and ideas about black culture in New York and Paris during the interwar years. These cultural interactions are examined through a postcolonial lens, highlighting their responses to intersecting power structures of racism and colonialism, along with their political, social, epistemological, and cultural implications in the U.S. and France. By addressing the historical significance of race, the study connects discourses of primitivist modernism, jazz, Africanist ethnography and art, the Harlem Renaissance, and Négritude—an intricate relationship that has been overlooked in contemporary scholarship.