Cultural Influence 

Cultural Influence

Bouissac, Paul. Circus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual. 2012.

Childress, Micah D. Circus Life: Performing and Laboring Under America’s Big Top Shows, 1830 – 1920. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2019.  Winner of the 2019 Stuart Thayer Prize awarded by Circus Historical Society.

Childress, Micah. “Life Beyond the Big Top: African American and Female Circusfolk, 1860 – 1920.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 15, Issue 2, April 2016, pp. 176 – 196.

Davis, Janet M. The Circus Age, Culture, and Society Under the American Big Top. University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Dorman, Jacob. “Race and Spectacle in the Circuses of Gilded Age America.” Literary Hub, March 12, 2020.

Jürgens, Anna-Sophie, ed. Circus, Science and Technology: Dramatising Innovation. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Lindfors, Bernth. “Circus Africans.” Journal of American Culture, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 1983, pp. 9 – 14.

Lindfors, Bernth. Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Busines. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Slout, William L. Theatre in a Tent. San Bernardino, CA: author. Study of tent shows from last half of 19th century into the Twentieth century. Popular amusements that incorporated aspects of the circus, moving pictures, vaudeville, Chautauqua and touring opera house companies.

Stoddard, Helen. Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation. Manchester, England: Manchester University, 2000.

Sugarman, Robert. Circus for Everyone: Circus Learning Around the World. Shaftsbury, VT: Mountainside Press, 2001. Sugarman is a scholar of youth circus programs. His research provides insights into circus schools, touring youth circuses, community circuses, circus camps, circus residencies, in-school programs, college circuses, and year-round independent circus programs.

Tait, Peta. Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance. London & New York: Routledge Member of the Taylor & Francis Group,  2005.

Tait, Peta and Katie Lavers. The Routledge Circus Studies Reader. London & New York: Routledge Member of the Taylor & Francis Group,  2016.

Toulmin, Vanessa. “Black Circus Performers in Victorian Britain.” Early Popular Visual Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2018, pp. 267 – 289.

Vecchio, Kat. “Barnum & Bailey’s Forgotten High-Flying Suffragists.” Narratively History. 

Ward, Steve. Sawdust Sisterhood: How Circus Empowered Women. Stroud, England: Fonthill Media, 2016.

Art

Clair, Jean, ed. The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Goldenstein, Rosalie, ed.; Dean Jensen, guest curator. Center Ring, the Artist: Two Centuries of Circus Art. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, c 1981.

Gustafson, Donna. Images from the World Between: The Circus in 20^th Century Art. Cambridge, MA: American Federation of Arts, 2001.

Thomson, Richard. Seurat’s Circus Sideshow. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.

Turner, Elizabeth Hutton; Ann Grace, eds. Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor. Milan, Italy: 5 Continents Editions Stl;, 2019.

Literature

Buckmaster, Jonathan. Dicken’s Clowns: Charles Dickens, Joseph Grimaldi and the Pantomime Life. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture.  Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019

Carlyon, David. “Twain’s ‘Stretcher:’ The Circus Shapes Huckleberry Finn.” South Atlantic Review, Vol. 72, No. 4, Fall 2007, pp. 1 – 36.

Fahy, Thomas. “’Damn everything but the circus!’ The Ambiguous Place of Popular Culture in E.E. Cummings’ ‘Him.’” Spring. New Series, No. 18, October 2011, pp. 66 – 93.

Lybeck, Eleanor.  All on Show: The Circus in Irish Literature and Culture. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2019.