Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus

Sep 9, 2025

Join Betsy Golden Kellem, a scholar of the unusual and Emmy-winning host, as she unveils the hidden history of daring female circus performers in the 19th century. Discover the boundary-breaking feats of women like Lavinia Warren and Annie Edson Taylor, who defied societal norms and redefined femininity in a male-dominated world. Kellem delves into the evolution of the circus as a major business and the cultural significance of these performances, highlighting the intersection between gender, history, and art in a captivating way.

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ANECDOTE

Dual Career As Lawyer And Historian

Betsy Golden Kellem is a practicing attorney who also pursues history as an independent scholar and public historian.
She hosts Showman Shorts and writes for JSTOR Daily while balancing legal work and historical projects.

ANECDOTE

From Childhood Juggler To Circus Scholar

Betsy taught herself juggling as a child and joined a college circus arts club where she practiced apparatus and tricks.
She still juggles occasionally and participates in circus communities as a researcher and board member.

INSIGHT

Circus Is A Cultural Cauldron

Circus blends many traditions (equestrian, fairground, commedia dell'arte, menageries) into a packaged commercial spectacle.
The uniquely American circus arose as these entertainments coalesced in 19th-century mass media culture.

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Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus, by Betsy Golden Kellem, reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers: boundary-breaking women like Lavinia Warren, known as the Queen of Beauty; to Millie-Christine McKoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale; to Patty Astley, the mother of the modern circus. These astounding female and gender-nonconforming artists wrestled snakes, performed magic tricks with electricity, and walked across waterfalls on tightropes, shattering taboos by performing in public. Betsy deftly explores how major forces in the long nineteenth century combined to create the uniquely American spectacle of the traveling circus. During the transformation of the circus from scrappy “mud shows” to a major international business, these extraordinary women challenged contemporary ideas of femininity, creating new possibilities for women far beyond the big top.

Our guest is: Betsy Golden Kellem, who is a scholar of the unusual. She has served on the boards of the Barnum Museum and the Circus Historical Society, is the Emmy-winning host and writer of the Showman’s Shorts video series on P.T. Barnum, and writes for JSTOR Daily. An expert media and intellectual property attorney, she has taught at Yale and the University of Connecticut, and regularly speaks on the weirder corners of history and law.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a dissertation and writing coach, and a developmental editor for scholars in the humanities. She is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

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