This essay argues that World's Fairs offer important examples of the struggle to craft "other places"for minority narratives while, simultaneously, ensuring that dominant narratives maintain their power. Employing Foucault's notion of heterotopia, the essay offers an analysis of the 1893 Columbian Exposition's Woman's Building as a site in which overlapping and contradictory narratives served to affirm the dominant rhetoric of "civilization" as White and male. Representations of the Woman's Building provide three principles upon which this process depends: (a) co-opting oppressed groups through "middling," (b) enacting hierarchy through opposingnarratives, and (c) marginalizing radical voices through "safe spectacle." The essay offers a historical parallel to contemporarysites of amusement and ideologysuch as shopping malls and themed communities,contributingtoscholarship that addresses theintersection ofplace,culture, and "otherness."