The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.11 (505 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00ZVEBOH8 |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 153 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
history traveled the nation. In 1903, 98 circuses and menageries the highest number in U.S. Arguing that circuses "helped catapult a 'nation of loosely connected islands' into a modern nation-state with an increasingly shared national culture," Davis traces how this continues today, in different forms, in places like Disneyland and Las Vegas. In this fascinating, provocative history of a democratic form of public entertainment, Davis, an American studies professor at the University of Texas at Austin, elucidates the enormous cultural impact of the railroad circus and how it became a "powerful cultural icon" and a concrete representation "of racial diversity, gender difference, bodily variety, animalized human beings, and humanized animals" as well as a "celebration of America's emerging role as a global power." Davis presents her theoretical material carefu
Mirror Images of Society L.S. Cauldwell It helped me understand the culture and society of the circus.. Whitt Patrick Pond said Well-researched and highly informative. Janet Davis' The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under The American Big Top is a very valuable book for anyone wanting to learn about the history of the American circus and the role it played in culture and society during the classic circus age back when the big circuses traversed the country by railroad and performed under canvas. Davis has done a remarkable amount of research, including finding and interviewing people whose tales about the circus give the reader real insight into what circus life was like and what the circus meant to . Not a popular history of the circus I was very disappointed when I started reading this book and realized that it's a history of social change in America that incidentally uses the circus to illustrate its points. It is not primarily a history of the circus. The book is based on a scholarly sociology dissertation, and hence, it has long sections that aren't really even circus-related, such as one on orientalism and another on gender issues. The promotional materials and the book's cover are highly misleading in this regard. I stopped reading about half way through.
Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power.Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show