This is a preview. Log in to get access
Abstract
This article locates Freak Show portraiture within the complex intersections between institutional photographic practice and the visual tradition of bourgeois self-portraiture. As active agents in their own performances and promotional imagery during the late-nineteenth-century American “Freak Show” performers offer insightful glimpses into the shadow archive of honorific and repressive functions of visual practice. Yet this was always a contested process, further complicated by intersecting shifts in popular culture, the gradual separation of amusement from instruction, the professionalization of medical science, and the growing influence of eugenic racial ideas concerning bodily difference, all of which contributed to the disenchantment of the “extraordinary body.” Photographic practices played a key role as a modern technology involved in such bodily disenchantment, but it also demonstrates how Freak Show performers were nonetheless able to turn this technology to their own advantage, as they navigated shifting regimes of bodily normalcy by offering complex layers of photographic meaning against reductive discourses of bodily pathology in need of correction.
Journal Information
AJAS (ISSN 0705-7113) is the official journal of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association. It is an international journal published twice a year, in July and December, by the Association.
Publisher Information
The purpose of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) is to encourage study and research in all aspects of U.S. culture and society. In addition to publishing the Australasian Journal of American Studies, the association holds scholarly biennial conferences, supports postgraduate seminars, publishes occasional papers, supports research travel to United States for postgraduate research candidates and encourages scholarly exchanges between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Rights & Usage
This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.
For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions
© The Australian and New Zealand
American Studies Association and The United States Studies Centre
Request Permissions
This is a preview. Log in to get access
Abstract
This article examines the origins and development of a common but little-studied form of nineteenth-century popular culture: the baby contest. Though contests were widely popular, they were also controversial. Fans of baby shows saw them as an expression of domesticity and maternal love, while critics of the shows argued that they objectified and commodified human beings. At issue was whether domesticity could be displayed and whether the objectified could be esteemed. Support for the shows overwhelmed opposition, and as the century wore on, criticism of the contests faded. By introducing a new form of display—the exhibition of the normal-baby contests helped to usher in a culture in which traditional oppositions such as public and private, home and market, objectification and approbation, were complementary rather than contradictory.
Journal Information
The Journal of Social History publishes articles and reviews in all fields of social history, regardless of period and region. It seeks particularly to promote work in new topics in social history, where it has established a distinguished record during its 40-year existence. New topics involve both the key facets of the field: exploring the histories and impacts of ordinary people and exploring aspects of the human experience beyond the more conventional historical staples. It also encourages discussions of key analytical and methodological issues, including comparative issues and issues of periodization. The Journal has also been active in bringing sociohistorical work in regional specializations, such as African or Latin American history, to a wider audience within the field. Periodically, the journal offers thematic issues that advance its basic purposes, including discussions of larger trajectories within the field itself.
Publisher Information
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
Rights & Usage
This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.
For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions
Journal of Social History
Request Permissions