In Freak Inheritance, both leading authors and emerging voices use cutting-edge disability and cultural theories to expose the operations of eugenicist thought in historical and contemporary culture. It is the follow-up to the field-defining Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (1996).

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor Emerita at Emory University.
Michael Mark Chemers is Professor and Chair, Department of Performance, Play and Design, at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Analola Santana is Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, Dartmouth College.

FOREWORD by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

INTRODUCTION: "Step Right Up! A New Introduction to the Old Freak Show" by Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Michael Mark Chemers, and Analola Santana
I. STAGING
1. "Abject Bodies in Performance Art" by Josefina Alcazar. Translated by Analola Santana
2. "The Normativity of the Extraordinary: Musical Theatre on the Page and on the Stage" by Stacy Wolf & Ryan Donovan
3. "Performance, Pleasure, and Profit at the Victorian Freak Show" by Nadya Durbach
4. "Chick Webb's Extraordinary Body of Music" by Meisha Rosenberg
5. "The Enfreakment of the Premature Infant: incubator baby shows in the United States" by Susan Kattwinkel
II. HYBRIDITY

6. "The Tragic Journey of a Mexican Savage to the Civilized World" by Roger Bartra. Translated by Analola Santana
7. "Rest in Peace, Charles Byrne?: The Last Testament and Enduring Legacy of the 18th Century 'Irish Giant'" by David A. Gerber
8. "Chin Up: Befriending the Bearded Ladies" by Lilian Craton
9. "Spectacles of Prognosis: El Niño Fidencio in the 21st Century" by Susan Antebi
III. MONSTROSITY
10. "Monstrous Births and the Religious Imagination" by Devan Stahl
11. "Human or Alien: Tracing Enfreaked Subjects in the 20th and 21st Century Theatre of Disability" by Danielle Bainbridge
12. "The Mortification of Harvey Leach" by Michael Mark Chemers
IV. UNSETTLING
13. "Freakish Fecundity: Birth and Baby Reality Television as Eugenicist Discourse" by Katya Vrtis
14. "Alexandrine: A German Princess with Down Syndrome who Survived the Holocaust" by Robert Bogdan
15. "Dead Weight: Exhibiting Fatness Postmortem" by Joyce Huff
16. "Disornamentation: An Optic for Reading Depictions of Disabled, Asian Women" by Jenna Gerdsen
17. "Sex Mad: Gender and Disability in the Art of Eudora Welty and Reginald Marsh" Keri Watson
V. LEARNING
18. "The Pedagogical Utility of Early Freak Show Scholarship" by Cynthia Wu
19. "Teaching the Extraordinary Body: A Generation of Freaks and Monsters in the Classroom" by Leonard Cassuto