Hosted by the Humanities Center and featuring Graduate Fellow, Alison Mahoney

This project examines the relationships among performers at the Midget Village in the 1933-34 Chicago Century of Progress (COP) World’s Fair. Without access to direct accounts from performers, Mahoney considers performances of nonspeaking collectivity housed within the COP and Eugenics Records Office (ERO) Archives. Mahoney reads conspicuous presences and absences in photos by ERO field agents alongside showmen’s memos complaining of performers’ strike action, and contrast these with promotional publications that sold visitors a utopian fantasy of the Village. Mahoney argues that midget cities like this attraction in Chicago enabled little people to establish collective disability politics earlier than the commonly recognized start to the disability rights movement, but that this collective solidarity was limited by the Village’s embrace of eugenicist ideologies. Precirculated material for this event is available here. 

Respondents include Rahul Kumar from Film & Media Studies and David Serlin, Professor of Communication at UC San Diego. This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person in 602 CL or via Zoom as you prefer.