Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

History General

Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 1900-1970s

by (author) Jane Nicholas

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2018
Category
General, Gender Studies, Women
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487502652
    Publish Date
    Apr 2018
    List Price
    $82.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487522087
    Publish Date
    Apr 2018
    List Price
    $39.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487515751
    Publish Date
    May 2018
    List Price
    $39.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

In 1973, a five year old girl known as Pookie was exhibited as "The Monkey Girl" at the Canadian National Exhibition. Pookie was the last of a number of children exhibited as 'freaks' in twentieth-century Canada.

 

Jane Nicholas takes us on a search for answers about how and why the freak show persisted into the 1970s. In Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 1900–1970s, Nicholas offers a sophisticated analysis of the place of the freak show in twentieth-century culture. Freak shows survived and thrived because of their flexible business model, government support, and by mobilizing cultural and medical ideas of the body and normalcy. This book is the first full length study of the freak show in Canada and is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of Canadian popular culture, attitudes toward children, and the social construction of able-bodiness. Based on an impressive research foundation, the book will be of particular interest to anyone interested in the history of disability, the history of childhood, and the history of consumer culture.

About the author

Jane Nicholas is an associate professor in the Department of Sexuality, Marriage and Family Studies at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo. She is the author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, The Body, and Consumer Cul-ture in the 1920s (2015) and the co-editor, with Patrizia Gentile, of Contesting Body and Nation in Canadian History (2013).

Jane Nicholas' profile page

Editorial Reviews

"This work is a demonstration of how original historical research, carefully and imaginatively deployed, can be usefully combined with contemporary culture theory of exhibitionary logics, embodiment, and difference. It is a story well told by a skillful historian."

<em>University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018</em>