Bio:

Madeline Steiner is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with the university’s Founding Documents initiative. Her research focuses on the history of capitalism and popular culture in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her book project, The Robber Barons of Show Business: Traveling Amusements and the Development of the American Entertainment Industry, 1870-1920, explores how traveling amusements such as circuses and minstrel shows built the foundations of today’s multi-billion dollar commercial entertainment industry. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina, and BAs in history and musical theatre performance from American University.

Courses:

• Hist 111: United States History to 1865
• Hist 201: America’s Founding Documents

Recent Publications:

• “The Historical Reality Behind the Psychics and Swindlers in ‘Nightmare Alley,” Made By History, The Washington Post, 2022
• “Joe Exotic Channels the Spirit of America’s 19th-Century Tiger Kings,” The Conversation, 2021
• “The Amusement Economist: J.H. Haverly and the Modernization of the American Minstrel Show,” Journal of American Culture 41, no. 3 (September 2018)