Betsy Golden Kellem

Minstrel shows were an American invention, but they also found success in the United Kingdom, where audiences were negotiating their relationships with empire.

The 1895 show purported to show a genuine Southern Black community and demonstrate Black cultural progress in America, from enslavement to citizenship.

A prolific, meticulous artist, McCay created characters and storyscapes that inspired generations of cartoonists and animators.

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

A camp diva, a queer icon, and a model of feminism—the memorable Mae West left behind a complicated legacy, on and off the stage.

The fortunes of Coney Island have waxed and waned, but in the early twentieth century, its amusement parks became a major American export.

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.

Produced by the master entertainer P. T. Barnum, a melodrama about the dangers of alcohol was the first show to run for a hundred performances in New York City.

The rise of popular literature for children put a story, a role model, and a set of values in a young boy’s pocket.

Scripted from front-page news, the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper plays were part entertainment, part protest, and entirely educational.

In the early twentieth century, dance marathons were an entire industry—and a surprisingly hazardous business.

Among P.T. Barnum's “human curiosities” was a supposed escapee from an Ottoman harem, marketed as both the pinnacle of white beauty and an exotic other.

After gunning down his wife's lover in broad daylight, Daniel Sickles tried to escape the gallows by claiming he was out of his mind.