As Angela Yon analyzed metadata from the circus route books digital collection, she noticed a dominating attraction in the circus at the turn of the 20th century.
Seventy percent of the circuses featured “human curiosities” and sideshow acts, which reinforced negative stereotypes, othering, and segregation. At that time, the circus was the main form of mass entertainment as the U.S. was undergoing massive cultural and economic changes.
Appears InYon, assistant professor and cataloging and metadata librarian at Milner Library, spent 2020–2021 focusing on these performers as she led a team in creating an interactive digital exhibit, Agency Through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books, 1875–1925, which is based on the library’s circus route books digital collection. “It’s about circus, but it’s about so much more. The circus sought after these performers for profitability but only if the show could limit their actions, often taking the humanness out of the person.”
Yon, who led the grant-funded project, wanted to share the performers’ humanity by revealing their stories, ones that will be discoverable in the future because of the metadata behind them. Metadata is technical and descriptive information about data that allows digital files to be preserved and more easily retrieved.
“When you digitize something, if there’s no description behind it, you can’t find it,” Yon said. “You need that labor, that investment in time in describing these digital objects, or they may as well be hidden in a shoebox.”
This exhibit is the final segment of the project “Step Right Up: Digitizing Over 100 Years of Circus Route Books,” a collaboration between the library, Circus World Museum, and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Milner is home to the Circus & Allied Arts Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the country.
Yon came to Illinois State University in 2014. She has a bachelor’s degree in art history and design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
In the following Q&A, Yon describes the exhibit and why it matters.
Describe your interactive exhibit and why it was created.
Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books 1875–1925 is an online exhibit exploring the diverse identities of circus performers and places the circus in a broader historical context. The exhibit features essays, images, interactive timelines, and map data visualizations of circus routes utilizing Native American lands, population data, and historical railroads. Data creation, analysis, and visualizations combined with digital storytelling optimize discoverability for these materials to a wider audience for research. Emergent technologies are providing new ways to visualize and interpret data and produce scholarly inquiry.
American society had excluded these persons; ironically as performers they were vital to the circus’ success. Exhibiting and commercially exploiting human difference was business. The narratives explore the question of performers finding agency through the lens of otherness and performance in a world that continuously sought to contain them.
“I hope viewers recognize the performers as strong human individuals and not defined as an acronymized, relegated group the country and circus industry felt should be restricted and identified only by difference.”
Angela Yon
What do you mean by agency, and why did you choose this time period?
There is an interactive “Routing the Circus 1875–1925” map that provides important historical context for the circus during a period when America was a country with territorial growth. It shows the circus’ development with the advent of the railroad alongside population growth and national expansion during these years.
In this formative period, the notion of Western imperialism, colonialization, and expansion prevailed. This is most evident with the numerous circus acts that presented the otherness, exoticism, and racist views of people from non-Western cultures as entertainment with ethnological congresses, human zoos and curiosities, and sideshows. Through performance this became the dominant narrative circuses helped to spread, reinforcing colonialist notions of power and racist hierarchy. The map of the circus stops at numerous cities and towns alongside population data illustrates the proliferation of these beliefs to the masses. The circus captures a fundamental paradox of racism and prejudice in the United States: Otherness is only as valuable as it is consumable.
In reversing this narrative constructed by the circus, the exhibit counters against this space the circus presented. The individual accounts examine the possibilities of independent, self-determining choices, the performer’s agency in a societal structure built on oppression and exploitation.
The exhibit includes a comprehensive, interactive timeline of what was happening in America during that period, including Native American genocide, the end of slavery, immigration, prejudice in race and gender relations, and the moral reform movement.
Why was this important to include?
It provides the historical context of compounding conflicts, government-sanctioned injustices, and resistance in which
the circus performers lived. These events, the aftereffects, and attitudes impacted and shaped these individuals profoundly and the lives they chose.
How does this exhibit relate to what is happening in America today?
The circus played a fundamental role in shaping American beliefs that still resonate in the 21st century. The exhibit examines how the act of building myths and constructing stereotypes about race and enforcing disparities was a fluid and changing process to fit government and capitalist agendas during the period. One may argue examples of this still hold true today. The American historical record has shown that these ideas do not disappear; marginalized populations continue to face inequities every single day.
Discrimination in American culture is not new and has been pervasive for centuries, often law enforced. The immigration and labor question in the 21st century is a similar one from more than a century ago. The chapter “Outsiders in Demand: Chinese and Japanese Immigrant Performers” discusses the first restrictive immigration law, which was based on both race and gender. The Page Act in 1875 prohibited entry of East Asian women on the assumption they were immoral and prostitutes. Seven years later the Chinese Exclusion Act banned all immigration from China.
This serves as a reminder for the necessary inclusion of multiple narratives in classrooms. It is more important than ever for the teaching, learning, and elevation of underrepresented voices and contributions to diversify the historical record and information landscape.
What do you hope people realize about the performers who achieved agency through circus?
I hope viewers recognize the performers as strong human individuals and not defined as an acronymized, relegated group the country and circus industry felt should be restricted and identified only by difference. The individual stories reveal moments of community, joy, and resilience amid conflicts and struggle. The rich storytelling highlights the complexities of race and gender relations in American society and the importance of intersectionality.
How can this exhibit be used?
The exhibit touches on American studies, history and interdisciplinary studies of sociology, economics, geography, race and cultural studies, performing arts, and gender studies. Educators and students in these areas may find this a useful resource.
The exhibit is one of the first integrated digital humanities projects at Milner and can serve as a model of collaborative digital humanities research. It exemplifies the potential of digital technologies, computational tools, and open data for exploring critical questions in the humanities and for presenting scholarship in new forms and interpretations.
How was this work funded, and who else was involved in creating the exhibit?
The Council on Library and Information Resources with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the project from 2017–2021.
It is a result of close collaboration, and I give much gratitude to the Exhibit Project Team: Digital Imaging Specialist Elizabeth Harman; Digital and Metadata Research Specialists Elizabeth C. Hartman and Mariah Wahl; and faculty contributors, Special Collections Librarian Assistant Professor Rebecca Fitzsimmons and Head of Technical Services Librarian Associate Professor Eric Willey. I also thank our collaborating institutions; Milner Library’s circus expert, Special Collections Librarian Associate Professor Maureen Brunsdale; and Dean Dallas Long.
