Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Contextualizing Performers In Circus Route Books: Linked Data Entities And Open Data, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The presentation will discuss the final phase of the 4-year project Step Right Up: Digitizing Over 100 Years of Circus Route Books made possible by the Digitizing Hidden Collections program, a national grant competition administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This segment of the project concentrated on making data open and reusable to aid in optimal discoverability and create data relationships with the collection. The culmination of these efforts resulted in the digital humanities project, Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books 1875-1925. This exhibition …

Sideshow Sounds: Black Bandleaders Respond To Exoticism, Elizabeth C. Hartman, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Everyone knows P. G. Lowery, broadcaster of African-American music. Less known are those whose sideshow leadership predates that of Lowery. The pioneering entrepreneurial-entertainment legacy of bandleaders like Solomon P. White, J. 0. McNutt, and James Wolfscale set the stage for Lowery's phenomenal success. This presentation investigates their personal histories in the context of mainstream and circus cultures; their indispensable contribution to the success of the circus and the popularization of African-American music; and their role as the sinew of African-American communities through newspaper distribution and correspondence.

Black sideshow bands-first documented in 1881 within Milner Library's Circus Route Books Digital Collection, …

Native Performance And Agency In The Wild West Show, Mariah Wahl, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

"The Wild West" has been romanticized and criticized as historical American trope. Much of this idea is based on the Wild West shows of Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and other traveling circus shows throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Often these shows functioned as propaganda for American imperialism, condoning and perpetuating cultural genocide against Native American populations.

The presentation will use autobiographical information to explore how many Native American Wild West performances and exhibits worked subversively to critique racist American institutions. Exhibits like the 1904 World's Fair placed Native performers of the Wild West show in stark contrast …

Guide To The Graphic, Scrapbook, And Secondary Source Materials In The Milner Library Lois Lenski Collection, Eric Willey, Sean Tippey, Nicole Wolski, Jessica Lavoy, Alexis Foran

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This guide provides newspaper style captions and descriptive terms from the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials for illustrations, photos, and scrapbooks in the Milner Library, Illinois State University, Lois Lenski Collection, circa 1850-1977 and citations for secondary source materials which were not directly created by Lenski or contain brief excerpts from Lenski's work. In addition, there is a spreadsheet (csv) file which contains the raw data used to compile this guide.