Vol. 4, No. 1-2 of Circus & Its Others; Research Work by Circus Writers Published
Performance Matters, an academic journal about the materiality and consequentiality of performance, has just published Vol. 4, No. 1-2 of Circus & Its Others, edited by Karen Fricker and Hayley Malouin. With a welcome message from Jennifer Miller and an introduction from the editors, the articles are separated in to five major categories of ‘otherness’ in regards to circus, including Gender Differences in Contemporary Circus, Reading Circus Bodies and Signs, Location, Locatedness and Mobility, Is Social Circus the Other Professional Circus?, and not the least, Freak & Queer.
In the 23 articles that are published, there are notable contributions from international academics who are developing their graduate thesis as well as seasoned academics and professional circus artists. There are many fascinating reads to chose from, for example, Affirmative Freakery, Freaky Methodologies: Circus and Its Bodies without Organs in Disability Circus by David Fancy, or Freak and Queer: Towards a Queer Circus, Queer Hatchings, Monsters in the Cabinet, and Queering Circus Sessions by Charles Batson. Several of the research papers are written by previous CircusTalk contributors, such as Welcome to The Cyborg Circus Show: Imagining Disability Futures Beyond Normative Bodies A Manifesto by Shay Ehrlich; A Modern Version of Running Away and Joining the Circus: From Inner City to around the World by Jessica Hentoff; Briefs: Bending Gender in Australian Contemporary Circus by Kristy Seymour; Gender Asymmetry and Circus Education by Alisan Funk and Social Circus: Developing Structures for Program Efficacy in the United States by Amy Cohen. The range of circus topics is diverse and fascinating and does much to push forward the ever developing concepts of circus in all of its forms while also helping to clarify the rising role of the circademic. The next session of Circus & Its Others will take place August 27th- 29th in Prague, running concurrent with the Letni Letna Festival and hopefully many new articles will be forthcoming. Until then, delve in to the deep research that has just been released in Volume 4.
Related content: Circus & Its Others II-A Call for Papers
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