Hi, I’m Betsy
… and let’s just say the circus has been part of my life for a long time.
I’ve always loved the circus – I learned to juggle as a young child, did some performing in college, and returned to it when I turned to writing and scholarship as an adult. I love the circus as a place of possibility, where the impossible is possible and where you get to put everyday worries aside for a bit.
The circus is more than a big top and a bucket of popcorn. It is a space outside reality, a magical realm where we can escape our everyday life and dream about ways to change it once we leave. In the tent, we see our own biases and dreams in sequins and a spotlight. Amazing things are possible. It can show us all how to be more joyful, more efficient, more in community with each other, and more wondrous.
I dive into, write on, and talk about the stranger corners of history, and I especially love digging around in the history of entertainment and popular culture because what we enjoy has a lot to tell us all about what we think, who we are, and who we might like to be. I also believe history is better when we work to make it interesting and accessible for everyone.
Betsy Golden Kellem is a scholar of the unusual. She is the author of Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the Nineteenth Century Circus (Feminist Press, 2025), and co-editor for the forthcoming Circus and Sideshow in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Documentary History (Routledge, 2026). She wrote about Annie Oakley for Fast Famous Women (Woodhall Press, 2025).
Her writing on circus and entertainment history has appeared in outlets including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Public Domain Review, Atavist Magazine, Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, and Slate. She is regularly consulted as an expert on circus history, and writes columns on entertainment and culture for JSTOR Daily and history.com.
Betsy is a two-time regional Emmy winner and a silver Telly award recipient for her Showman’s Shorts video series on P. T. Barnum, for which she is writer and host. She has served on the boards of the Barnum Museum and the Circus Historical Society. She speaks for academia and industry on circus and entertainment history, with past venues including the Mark Twain House and Museum, Historic New Orleans, FanX Salt Lake, and the Popular Culture Association.
She is drawn to the frivolous, the entertaining and the bizarre, believing that where we’re headed as a society is often a direct product of what we enjoy and where we spend our free time and money.
If you ask nicely, she will juggle knives for you.
