Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Circus

Jumping Through Hoops tells the hidden history of female circus performers who played with and shattered gender stereotypes during the rise of the American traveling circus.

The circus is full of colorful tales of larger-than-life personalities such as P.T. Barnum, General Tom Thumb, and Philip Astley, the so-called “father of the modern circus.” However, history often overlooks the astounding ways that women carved out space for themselves in the circus at a time when women were expected to stay home and defer to men. Jumping Through Hoops sets the record straight, telling the stories of boundary-breaking circus women such as The Queen of Beauty, Lavinia Warren; Millie-Christine McKoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale; and Patty Astley, who should rightfully be remembered as the mother of modern circus.

The spectacular skills, unusual bodies, and bold backstories of these female and gender non-conforming circus performers who walked on tightropes across waterfalls, rode horseback in drag, wrestled snakes, and performed feats of electrical magic challenged public ideas of what femininity could look like. Jumping Through Hoops gives these performers their rightful place in circus history.

In this deeply researched book, Emmy award winning circus historian Betsy Golden Kellem deftly explores how the beginning of modern mass-media culture, changes in technology and transportation, and cultural shifts in the United States impacted the circus, and how these extraordinary individual circus artists shaped our modern understanding of gender, culture, and performance in America.

© 2025 The Feminist Press at CUNY (E-bog): 9781558613454

Release date

E-bog: 10. juni 2025