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Chapter 16 - Through the Looking Glass

Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Circus Studies

from Part IV - Circus Studies Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2021

By
Anna-Sophie Jürgens
Edited by
Gillian Arrighi  and
Jim Davis
Gillian Arrighi
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
Jim Davis
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

This chapter elucidates how – under the umbrella term circus studies – different disciplines define and explore the aesthetic, innovative, transgressive, and intermedial potentials of the circus arts. Disciplines involved in studying circus include cultural and literary studies, artistic research, neurosciences, sports and physical activity science, engineering, science communication, disability studies, humour studies, and many more. Offering a colourful and suggestive, but by no means exhaustive, introduction to the multiple approaches to a unique artistic practice and cultural phenomenon, the chapter focuses on two perspectives in circus research: work that, to understand circus practice, employs a science lens and work that, to understand the circus as a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon, utilises a humanities prism. The chapter presents a mosaic of perspectives and ideas in recent scholarly engagement with the circus and points to some of the crossroads where different disciplines meet.

Keywords

circus in academiacircus in the humanitiescircus in sciencecircus and interdisciplinary researchmethodologies in circus studies
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to the Circus , pp. 244 - 256
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Peacock, Louise. ‘Battles, Blows and Blood: Pleasure and Terror in the Performance of Clown Violence.’ Comedy Studies 11, no. 1 (2019).Google Scholar
Ritter, Naomi. Art As Spectacle: Images of the Entertainer since Romanticism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Starobinski, Jean. Portrait de l’artiste en saltimbanque. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.Google Scholar
Stoddart, Helen. Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Tait, Peta, and Lavers, Katie, eds. The Routledge Circus Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Welsford, Enid. The Fool: His Social and Literary History. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1966.Google Scholar
Ylönen, Susanne C., and Keisalo, Marianna. ‘Sublime and Grotesque: Exploring the Luminal Positioning of Clowns between Oppositional Aesthetic Categories.’ Comedy Studies 11, no. 1 (2019).Google Scholar

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