An authoritative introduction to the specialised histories of the modern circus, its unique aesthetics, and its contemporary manifestations and scholarship, from its origins in commercial equestrian performance, to contemporary inflections of circus arts in major international festivals, educational environments, and social justice settings.

This collection aims to map a diversity of approaches to the artform by creating a 360° view on the circus. The three sections of the book, Aesthetics, Practice, Culture, approach aesthetic developments, issues of artistic practice, and the circus’ role within society. This book consists of a collection of articles from renowned circus researchers, junior researchers, and artists. It also provides the core statements and discussions of the conference UpSideDown—Circus and Space in a graphic recording format. Hence, it allows a clear entry into the field of circus research and emphasizes the diversity of approaches that are well balanced between theoretical and artistic point of views. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of circus studies, emerging disciples of circus and performance.

Female solo aerialists of the 1920s and early 1930s were internationally popular performers in the largest live performance mass entertainment of the period in the UK and USA. Yet these aerialists and this period in circus history have been largely forgotten despite the iconic image of ‘the’ female aerialist still flaring in the popular imagination. Kate Holmes uses insights gained as a practitioner to reconstruct in detail the British and American performances and public personae of key stars such as Lillian Leitzel, Luisita Leers, and the Flying Codonas, revealing what is performed and implicit in today’s practice. Using a wealth of original sources, this book considers the forgotten stars whose legacy of the cultural image of the female aerialist echoes. Locating performers within wider cultural histories of sport, glamour, and gender, this book asks important questions about their stardom, including: Why were female aerialists so alluring when their muscularity challenged conservative ideals of femininity and how did they participate in change? What was it about their movements and the spaces they performed in that activated such strong audience responses? This book is vital reading for students and practitioners of aerial performance, circus, gender, popular performance, and performance studies.

This book examines how circus and circus imaginary have shaped the historical avant-gardes at the beginning of the 20th century and the cultures they help constitute, to what extent this is a mutual shaping, and why this is still relevant today. This book aims to produce a better sense of the artistic work and cultural achievements that have emerged from the interplay of circus and avant-garde artists and projects, and to clarify both their transhistorical and trans-medial presence, and their scope for interdisciplinary expansion. Across 14 chapters written by leading scholars – from fields as varied as circus, theatre and performance studies, art, media studies, film and cultural history – some of which are written together with performers and circus practitioners, the book examines to what extent circus and avant-garde connections contribute to a better understanding of early 20th century artistic movements and their enduring legacy, of the history of popular entertainment, and the cultural relevance of circus arts. Circus and the Avant-Gardes elucidates how the realm of the circus as a model, or rather a blueprint for modernist experiment, innovation and (re)negotiation of bodies, has become fully integrated in our ways of perceiving avant-gardes today. The book does not only map the significance of circus/avant-garde phenomena for the past, but, through an exploration of their contemporary actualisations (in different media), also carves out their achievements, relevance, and impact, both cultural and aesthetic, on the present time.

Is educational research chasing the trends one can observe in big sciences, mimicking what happens, some would say successfully, elsewhere in academia? The question in the title of this edited collection took its inspiration from a verse by Goethe: Wer Großes will, muss sich zusammenraffen. In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister. Such confinement or limitation that may show mastery does not characterize at all the present state of the educational research publication scene. Instead, there have never been more of such publications which follow each other with an increasing speed. It may therefore be interesting to delve into the reasons of this development that is characteristic of what is published in this field as in many or almost all fields of scholarly work. The chapters in this collection address aspects of the (re)presentation, dissemination and reception, and the production and acceleration of educational research. An international group of scholars, philosophers and historians of education, address questions such as ‘Why publish?’, ‘The lust for academic fame’, ‘Why educational historiography is not an unnecessary luxury?’, and ‘Ways of knowing’. The twelve chapters are preceded by an introduction where issues of plurality and diversity in the study of education are at centre stage and followed by an Epilogue written by the Editors of the Springer Series Educational Research. Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe offer some final reflections after a journey of two decades that took them and the colleagues participating in the Research Community from 1999 till 2018 floating on the current of the Zeitgeist that carried the Discipline of Education. They claim finally that mastery in the study of education requires restraint.