Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
5,180
result(s) for
"Circus"
Sort by:
Entertaining elephants : animal agency and the business of the American circus
How the lives and labors of nineteenth-century circus elephants shaped the entertainment industry.
Consider the career of an enduring if controversial icon of American entertainment: the genial circus elephant. In Entertaining Elephants Susan Nance examines elephant behavior—drawing on the scientific literature of animal cognition, learning, and communications—to offer a study of elephants as actors (rather than objects) in American circus entertainment between 1800 and 1940. By developing a deeper understanding of animal behavior, Nance asserts, we can more fully explain the common history of all species.
Entertaining Elephants is the first account that uses research on animal welfare, health, and cognition to interpret the historical record, examining how both circus people and elephants struggled behind the scenes to meet the profit necessities of the entertainment business. The book does not claim that elephants understood, endorsed, or resisted the world of show business as a human cultural or business practice, but it does speak of elephants rejecting the conditions of their experience. They lived in a kind of parallel reality in the circus, one that was defined by their interactions with people, other elephants, horses, bull hooks, hay, and the weather.
Nance's study informs and complicates contemporary debates over human interactions with animals in entertainment and beyond, questioning the idea of human control over animals and people's claims to speak for them. As sentient beings, these elephants exercised agency, but they had no way of understanding the human cultures that created their captivity, and they obviously had no claim on (human) social and political power. They often lived lives of apparent desperation.
eBook
Circus World
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.
eBook
The show must go on!
Two mice and a crow, who travel with a circus, cleaning up the spilled popcorn after every performance, come to the rescue when a greedy con artist takes over the management of the circus.
Book
Effect of Regular Circus Physical Exercises on Lymphocytes in Overweight Children: e0120262
Obesity associated with a sedentary lifestyle can lead to changes in the immune system balance resulting in the development of inflammatory diseases. The aim of this study was to compare lymphocyte activation mechanisms between overweight children practicing regular circus physical exercises with non-exercised children. The study comprised 60 pubescent children randomly divided into 4 groups: Overweight Children (OWC) (10.67 plus or minus 0.22 years old), Overweight Exercised Children (OWE) (10.00 plus or minus 0.41 years old), Eutrophic Children (EC) (11.00 plus or minus 0.29 years old) and Eutrophic Exercised Children (EE) (10.60 plus or minus 0.29 years old). OWE and EE groups practiced circus activities twice a week, for 4.3 plus or minus 0.5 and 4.4 plus or minus 0.5 months, respectively. Percentage of T regulatory cells (Treg) and the expression of CD95 and CD25 in CD4+ lymphocytes were evaluated by flow cytometry. Lymphocyte proliferation capacity was measured by [14C]-thymidine incorporation and mRNA expression of IL-35, TGF-beta, IL-2 and IL-10 by real-time PCR. Lymphocyte proliferation was higher in OWC and OWE groups compared with the EC (3509 plus or minus 887; 2694 plus or minus 560, and 1768 plus or minus 208 cpm, respectively) and EE (2313 plus or minus 111 cpm) groups. CD95 expression on lymphocytes was augmented in the EC (953.9 plus or minus 101.2) and EE groups (736.7 plus or minus 194.6) compared with the OWC (522.1 plus or minus 125.2) and OWE groups (551.6 plus or minus 144.5). CTLA-4 expression was also lower in the OWC and OWE groups compared with the EC and EE groups. Percentage of Treg, IL-35, and IL-10 mRNA expression were lower in the OWC and OWE groups compared with the EC and EE groups. In conclusion, overweight children present altered immune system balance characterized by elevated lymphocyte proliferation due to a decrease in T regulatory cell percentage. These effects were partially reverted by moderate physical exercise, as demonstrated by decreased lymphocyte proliferation.
Journal Article
Peter Spier's circus!
A traveling circus arrives, sets up its village of tents, performs for the crowd, and then moves on again.
Book
Circus Life
The nineteenth century saw the American circus move from a reviled
and rejected form of entertainment to the \"Greatest Show on Earth.\"
Circus Life by Micah D. Childress looks at this transition
from the perspective of the people who owned and worked in circuses
and how they responded to the new incentives that rapid
industrialization made possible. The circus has long been a subject
of fascination for many, as evidenced by the millions of Americans
that have attended circus performances over many decades since
1870, when the circus established itself as a truly unique
entertainment enterprise. Yet the few analyses of the circus that
do exist have only examined the circus as its own closed
microcosm-the \"circus family.\" Circus Life, on the other
hand, places circus employees in the larger context of the history
of US workers and corporate America. Focusing on the circus as a
business-entertainment venture, Childress pushes the scholarship on
circuses to new depths, examining the performers, managers, and
laborers' lives and how the circus evolved as it grew in popularity
over time. Beginning with circuses in the antebellum era, Childress
examines changes in circuses as gender balances shifted,
industrialization influenced the nature of shows, and customers and
crowds became increasingly more middle-class. As a study in sport
and social history, Childress's account demonstrates how the
itinerant nature of the circus drew specific types of workers and
performers, and how the circus was internally in constant upheaval
due to the changing profile of its patrons and a changing economy.
MICAH D. CHILDRESS received his PhD in history
from Purdue University and currently works as a Realtor® in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. His articles have appeared in Popular
Entertainment Studies and American Studies.
eBook
Margaret Hillert's Circus fun
\"A boy spends the day at the circus and sees all the attractions including a parade, the big top tent, clowns, and acrobats\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
When Pigs Could Fly and Bears Could Dance
For more than seven decades the circuses enjoyed tremendous popularity in the Soviet Union. How did the circus—an institution that dethroned figures of authority and refused any orderly narrative structure—become such a cultural mainstay in a state known for blunt and didactic messages? Miriam Neirick argues that the variety, flexibility, and indeterminacy of the modern circus accounted for its appeal not only to diverse viewers but also to the Soviet state. In a society where government-legitimating myths underwent periodic revision, the circus proved a supple medium of communication. Between 1919 and 1991, it variously displayed the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution, the beauty of the new Soviet man and woman, the vulnerability of the enemy during World War II, the prosperity of the postwar Soviet household, and the Soviet mission of international peace—all while entertaining the public with the acrobats, elephants, and clowns. With its unique ability to meet and reconcile the demands of both state and society, the Soviet circus became the unlikely darling of Soviet culture and an entertainment whose usefulness and popularity stemmed from its ambiguity.
eBook