Salomania and the Representation of Race and Gender in Modern Erotic Dance

This study turns critical attention to cultures of maternity in the late 19th century, primarily with reference to the ways in which women are defined in relation to their genitals as patriarchal property and space and are valued according to reproduction as their primary labour. Erotic dance as it takes shape in the modern representation of Salome insists both that the mother is and is not visible in the body of the dancer, a contradiction this study characterizes as reproductive fetishism.

Looking at a range of media, the study traces the modern figure of Salome through visual art, writing, early psychoanalysis and dance, from hootchie kootch to the performances dancer Maud Allan called mimeo-dramatic to mid-20th-century North American films such as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Charles Lamont's Salome, Where She Danced to the 21st-century HBO series The Sopranos.