The nineteenth-century commitment to thrilling an audience embodied an emerging synergy of public performance, collective experience, and individual agency.

Strongwoman Charmion used Thomas Edison’s experiments with moving pictures to encourage women to embrace strength and physical activity.

The circus provided opportunities to some in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but could not avoid the racism and misogynoir of the "outside world."

In Victorian England, the circus appealed across an otherwise class-divided society, its audiences ranging from poor peddlers to prestigious public figures.

P.T. Barnum, born July 5, 1810, was "the first great advertising genius and the greatest publicity exploiter the world has ever known."

The unsettling story of Barnum's White Elephant.