About Leonard Cassuto
Leonard Cassuto is Professor of English at Fordham University. He is the author or editor of seven books on American literature and culture. The most recent of these are The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011), of which he was general editor, and The Cambridge Companion to Baseball (2011). Cassuto is the author of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (2008).
“Freak” labels disability as spectacle. The freak stands as an archetypal “other,” a disabled figure on theatrical display before an able-bodied audience that uses the display to define its own sense of belonging.