"Wilder, born in 1859, was a famous vaudeville performer often described as a 'hunchback dwarf.' He resisted tokenization by developing and claiming cross-disability (as well as cross-class) alliances with marginalized others. His work speaks not only to disability studies but to the conjunction of performance studies and critical prison studies."

Recommended by Susan Schweik, Professor of English and author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public.