What does "the show business" mean, not just in America since P. T. Barnum, but elsewhere and earlier: across cultures and eras, continually transforming and translated? In this lecture, Jim Boon makes seriocomic stabs at interpreting show biz (a vast arena of human endeavor) a bit differently, and ethnographically. Prolific cultural anthropologist and intellectual historian, Jim Boon's work has been at the forefront of critical anthropology and cultural studies for over twenty-five years; his latest book, Verging on Extra-Vagrance, was published in 1999.

Photo credit: Tom Elliott, exhibition bicyclist. Used with permission of Princeton University Library.

Sponsored by: Department of Anthropology, Department of History