Into the odditorium

A pedagogy of the body at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and in popular media

Bibliographic Data

ID21747157
AuthorsCathlin Bryn Goulding (0000-0002-3790-1203, Curriculum and Teaching, Hunter College CUNY, New York, New York, USA), Cathlin Goulding (Center for Brooklyn History, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume18
Issue2
Pages101-118
Publication date2021-05-04
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Curriculum and Pedagogy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1550-5170 • E-ISSN: 2156-8154
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15505170.2021.1927263
OpenAlexW3208005166
LanguageEN
References cited19

For the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, a cartoonist named Robert Ripley would create his first odditorium, a public archive of his personal collection of curiosities. While Ripley was not the first to capitalize on the display of “exotic” and “monstrous” curios, his odditoriums illuminate pervasive ideas about human difference circulating in public discourse in the early twentieth century. The odditorium and the freak show are seemingly anachronistic phenomena, but the forums and yearnings for “oddities” still surface in popular culture today: the proliferation of podcasts that detail the lives of serial killers and cult leaders, the massive audiences drawn to viewing cystic acne popped in YouTube videos, and youth makeup artists who cover and uncover dermatological conditions with myriad skincare products and makeup in self-produced video tutorials. This paper will investigate odditoriums as a specific—and troubling—form of public pedagogy, shifting between readings of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in New York’s Times Square and the role of body-as-mannequin and haptic simulation in contemporary sites of popular learning

Mathematics education · Media studies · Pedagogy · Sociology · Digital Games and Media · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology

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