Vol. 4 No. 1-2 (2018): Circus and Its Others
![Circus Amok's Jennifer Miller](https://performancematters-thejournal.com/public/journals/1/cover_issue_7_en_US.gif)
Image Caption: "Step Right Up!": Circus Amok's Jennifer Miller introduces this special issue of Performance Matters on "Circus and Its Others." Click through to the Table of Contents to view Jennifer's full welcome message.
Issue Editors: Karen Fricker and Hayley Malouin
Making a bold intervention into the burgeoning world of contemporary circus research, this special double issue brings together 20 papers (many of them first presented at an international conference in Montreal in 2016) in order to address the following questions: To what extent and in what ways is circus always-already different, and about difference? How does the mainstreaming of circus in our era affect its status as a haven for the different, the outsider? What is happening to circus’s historic status as a site for the celebration and exploitation of differences, from stagings of exceptional performing bodies to the display of “freakery,” in the context of the increased mainstream popularity of the genre? In what ways are contemporary circus artists and companies embracing and exploiting (or not) difference in their practice?