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Further into Imperfecta Living Curiosities: Agency and Exploitation of the Teratological Body Curiosity draws us to the monstrous. But seeing is believing: whether in a book, a museum, or in a show, for centuries people have flocked to see “monsters” for themselves. In the 19th century, many people born with non-normative bodies performed as “freaks” in circus sideshows. Circuses became a sensation and they served as a forerunner to the modern entertainment industry. This exhibit explores the lives of the performers and showmen whose livelihoods depended on the public’s curiosity about seeing wondrous bodies for themselves. Seeing is Believing: Visualizing the Teratological Body When it comes to the wondrous, seeing is believing. From this page, you can explore some of the ways that “monsters” have been depicted over the centuries. Woodcuts in early modern texts, preservation in medical museums, and photography all have been used to display people. These technologies allowed one person’s image to travel across the world and allowed their subjects to “survive” beyond death. What Does It Mean to be "Other?" What does it mean to be a “monster?” What does it mean to be “normal?” These are not objective categories. They have changed meaning throughout history as people have become exposed to a wider diversity of nature, people, and ideas. From this path, you can explore some types of “Otherness” that have, throughout history, challenged apparently objective categories and shaped the direction of science.

Retrieving Lost Community

In her presentation, Historian and curator Katherine Ott discusses the development of the field of teratology through a disability studies framework. The imagination has been significant in shaping analyses, descriptions, and aesthetics related to anomalous humans. Data for historical research primarily resides in medical archives and special collections, often the life's work of private collectors. While the gathering and preserving of this information for study benefits medical practitioners, the retrieved narratives are also an important family album for others as a means to locate themselves through community with those long past and on the margins.

Katherine Ott, Ph.D. is a curator and historian in the Division of Medicine and Science at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. She works on the history of medicine and the body, disability and bodily difference, and LGBTQ history, among other topics. She has curated exhibitions on the history of disability, HIV and AIDS, polio, acupuncture, and medical devices for altering the human body. Her most recent web exhibition is "EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America". The author of Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture Since 1870 (1996), she coedited Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (2002) and The Scrapbook in American Life (2006), and is currently finishing a monograph about some of the major issues involved in interpreting historical objects. She also teaches graduate courses in material culture at George Washington University.

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Curiosity draws us to the monstrous. But seeing is believing: whether in a book, a museum, or in a show, for centuries people have flocked to see “monsters” for themselves. In the 19th century, many people born with non-normative bodies performed as “freaks” in circus sideshows. Circuses became a sensation and they served as a forerunner to the modern entertainment industry. This exhibit explores the lives of the performers and showmen whose livelihoods depended on the public’s curiosity about seeing wondrous bodies for themselves.
When it comes to the wondrous, seeing is believing. From this page, you can explore some of the ways that “monsters” have been depicted over the centuries. Woodcuts in early modern texts, preservation in medical museums, and photography all have been used to display people. These technologies allowed one person’s image to travel across the world and allowed their subjects to “survive” beyond death.