Fanny and Phrenology: An American Reading of Ballerina Fanny Elssler

Abstract In 1841, U.S. phrenologist Lorenzo Fowler published The Phrenological Developments and Characters of J. V. Stout, the Sculptor, and Fanny Elssler, the Actress, analyzing the heads of a ballerina megastar and an artist who made a statue of her. Performances by Elssler, the most renowned ballet dancer to have crossed the Atlantic, subjected her to condemnation, commentary, adulation, and misunderstanding, drawing exceptional attention to stage dancing and dancers at a time when the place of women and the function of the arts in the still-young republic were under intense debate. This essay treats Elssler’s U.S. reception through the lens of this publication’s “scientific” analysis of the renowned dancer.