Freak Shows And The Modern American Imagination

Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination examines the artistic use of freak shows between 1900 and 1950. During this period, the freak show shifted from a highly popular and profitable form of entertainment to a reviled one. But why? And how does this response reflect larger social changes in the United States at the time? Artists responded to this change by using the freakish body as a tool for exploring problematic social attitudes about race, disability, and sexual desire in American culture. The freak body in art not only reveals disturbing truths about early twentieth-century prejudices, but it also becomes a space for exploring the profound social impact of contemporary events such as the Great Migration, World War I, and the Great Depression.

Freak Shows and the Modern American Imagination examines the artistic use of freak shows between 1900 and 1950. During this period, the freak show shifted from a highly popular and profitable form of entertainment to a reviled one. But why? And how does this response reflect larger social changes in the United States at the time? Artists responded to this change by using the freakish body as a tool for exploring problematic social attitudes about race, disability, and sexual desire in American culture. The freak body in art not only reveals disturbing truths about early twentieth-century prejudices, but it also becomes a space for exploring the profound social impact of contemporary events such as the Great Migration, World War I, and the Great Depression.

Thomas Fahy is an assistant professor of English and Director of the American Studies Program at Long Island University. His other books include a monograph on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (2003), two novels, Night Visions (2004) and The Unspoken (2007), and several edited collections--Considering Alan Ball (2006), Considering Aaron Sorkin (2005), Captive Audience: Prison and Captivity in Contemporary Theater (2003), and Peering Behind the Curtain: Disability, Illness and the Extraordinary Body in Contemporary Theater (2002).