Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body

Client: University of Toronto Press (2018)

Project: Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 1900-1970s, by Jane Nicholas

Specialty: In this 320-page book, the author offers a sophisticated analysis of the place of the freak show in twentieth-century culture. Freak shows survived and thrived because of their flexible business model, government support, and by mobilizing cultural and medical ideas of the body and normalcy. This book is the first full-length study of the freak show in Canada and is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of Canadian popular culture, attitudes toward children, and the social construction of able-bodiness. The index required paying careful attention to the particular terminology of this era, proper spelling of carnival locations and carnival owners, medical terminology, references to popular culture, key words capturing the experiences of all those who participated in the carnivals, and indexing of figures and illustrations. The index was styled according to the Press’s preferences; it was 19 pages as a final Word document in single column. The final index was reviewed by the author who made a few small changes/corrections, and then we sent the final document to UTP for production as a double-column index for the back of the book.