Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination

Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. By Rachel Adams. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. xii, 289 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-226-00538-0. Paper, $19.00, ISBN 0-226-00539-9.)

Over the past decade a growing number of scholarly studies of "freak shows," exhibitions of "human oddities," and sideshows of all kinds have enriched our understanding of cultural history. At the same time, it is also clear that no consensus has developed about how those shows should be understood. Interpretations range from studies that emphasize the exploitative dimensions of the exhibits to investigations that emphasize their functions as performances that, to some degree, empowered people with physical and mental disabilities. Rachel Adams wants us to consider freak shows along a new axis and suggests that the freak show be examined as...