Circus studies: where to next?

The developing academic field of circus studies has been enriched in recent times with several new publications that attest to the circus’s specialised history in different parts of the globe. Matthew Wittmann’s Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010 is, as the title indicates, a diachronic study of the circus in New York where it “has been part of the city’s cultural fabric for over two centuries.”1 Though not dwelt upon at any length by Wittmann, the intrinsic links between the development of the North American circus and urban modernity pervade the historic narrative of this book, with its acknowledgement that both the city of New York and the circus “have been characterized by the same restless energy and brilliant spectacle.”2 This book is both a richly detailed catalogue of the 2012-13 exhibition of the same name, and a lucidly written historical survey of major trends and events in the evolution of the circus in North America—from the time of its transmission from the United Kingdom by equestrian John Bill Ricketts in the closing years of the eighteenth century, to the present. Resulting from the author’s curatorial association with the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan, Circus and the City reflects the Center’s purpose to innovate thinking about the decorative arts, design history, and material culture.