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Full Description
From the 1870s to the 1960s, circuses crisscrossed the nation providing entertainment. A unique workforce of human and animal laborers from around the world put on the show. They also formed the backbone of a tented entertainment industry that raised new questions about what constituted work and who counted as a worker. Andrea Ringer examines the industry-wide circus world--the collection of shows that traveled by rail, wagon, steamboat, and car--and the traditional and nontraditional laborers who created it. Performers and their onstage labor played an integral part in the popularity of the circus. But behind the scenes, other laborers performed the endless menial tasks that kept the show on the road. Circus operators regulated employee behavior both inside and outside the tent even as the employees themselves blurred the line between leisure and labor until, in all parts of the show, the workers could not escape their work.
Illuminating and vivid, Circus World delves into the gender, class, and even species concerns within an extinct way of life.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction The Circus World in the Golden Age
Part I: The Circus Migrant
Making Circus Day
Human and Animal Circus Workers and Their Knowledge Networks
Part II: The Circus Lot
Women's Work and Gendered Circus Labor in the Tented Shows
Animal Motherhood and (Re)Constructed Circus Families
Captive, Coerced, and Frontline Sideshow Workers
Part III: The Circus World from the Outside
The Circus as Big Business
The Making of the Circus Celebrity
Organized Circus Labor and Working-Class Audiences
Conclusion Circus Afterlives
Notes
Index
