This book is available on back order and is due to be published in May 2026
This collection of essays on circus histories and theories centred on the Global South and its transnational contexts is significant in challenging a field long dominated by Global North perspectives. Across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, circus traditions can be traced to the nineteenth century and earlier with biographies, autobiographies, and historical accounts produced in regional languages. Despite their richness, these bodies of knowledge remain marginal to scholarship in English and other major global languages. By foregrounding these overlooked histories and contemporary developments, this volume traces both regional and transnational circuits that connect the Global South to the wider world. Bringing together contributions from established and emerging scholars, the collection represents a groundbreaking intervention that reconfigures the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of circus studies, opening up new vistas into this performative arena and the intertwined lives of the humans and animals who inhabit it.
Nisha P R is a historian and the author of Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus. She has been a Fulbright fellow at Yale University, Mellon-SSRC fellow at University of the Witwatersrand, Research Fellow at Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and International Institute for Asian Studies.
Available on backorder
