Danielle Bainbridge, "Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive" (NYU Press, 2026)

·1 hr·5 clips

A graduate student's haunting first encounter with a photograph of conjoined twins Millie Christine McCoy sparks a decade-long investigation into their forgotten lives.

In this episode of New Books in Performing Arts, host Sullivan Summer interviews Danielle Bainbridge about her book 'Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive.' Bainbridge, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, begins by recounting her initial encounter with a photograph of conjoined twins Millie Christine McCoy in an archive, which sparked her research. She explains how the book investigates the labor systems that exploited Black performers born into slavery, framing performance as a form of extraction akin to manual labor. The McCoys, born in the 1850s in North Carolina, performed in freak shows and continued after emancipation, using acts like singing duets and speaking two languages simultaneously to assert their humanity. Bainbridge contrasts their story with that of Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins who owned slaves, highlighting differences in race and gender. She delves into the McCoys' autobiographies, noting discrepancies between promotional narratives and legal battles with former enslavers. The discussion includes other enslaved performers like Blind Tom and Joyce Heth, broadening the scope of performance under slavery. Bainbridge addresses ethical considerations in reproducing archival photographs, choosing to crop images to avoid perpetuating harm. She describes her performance piece 'Curio' and its inspiration from poetry collections like 'Oleo' by Tyehimba Jess and 'Zong!' by M. NourbeSe Philip, which use archival materials creatively. The episode concludes with Bainbridge reflecting on the necessity of her book and her accountability to the subjects' stories, emphasizing a commitment to minimizing harm while telling complex histories.

As heard by us

A carte de visite of Millie Christine McCoy opens a searching conversation about performance, slavery, and the archive.

A small black-and-white carte de visite anchors this thoughtful episode on slavery, spectacle, and performance as they survive through paper and photographs.

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Why you'd press play

You can follow one archive photograph into a hard question about what happens when enslavement and performance meet.

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