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Celebration Studies
High Theory May 23, 2023

Party

A Discussion with Sheila Liming

Sheila Liming

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Sheila Liming talks about the party, social gatherings that occasion joy and dread and various emotions in between. The party is both a pause and an acceleration in the life-work …

Celebration Studies

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Interviews with scholars of celebration about their new books.

Mexican Studies January 14, 2023

Sovereign Joy

Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640

Miguel Valerio

Hosted by Isabel Machado
Sovereign Joy Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) explores the performance of festive black kings and queens among Afro-Mexicans between 1539 and 1640. It illustrates how the …
Celebration Studies April 26, 2022

Mardi Gras Beads

Doug MacCash

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
The first in a new LSU Press series exploring facets of Louisiana’s iconic culture, Mardi Gras Beads (2022) delves into the history of this celebrated New Orleans artifact, explaining how Mardi …
Celebration Studies October 27, 2021

Doing Gender in Events

Feminist Perspectives in Critical Event Studies

Barbara Grabher

Hosted by Isabel Machado
Exploring the relationship between gender and events, Doing Gender in Events: Feminist Perspectives in Critical Event Studies (Routledge, 2021) delivers an ethnographic analysis of the celebration of gender equality in …
Celebration Studies August 6, 2021

Festive Enterprise

The Business of Drama in Medieval and Renaissance England

Jill P. Ingram

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In Festive Enterprise: The Business of Drama in Medieval and Renaissance England (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), Dr. Jill Ingram merges the history of economic thought with studies of theatricality and spectatorship …
Celebration Studies June 25, 2021

Rituality and Social (Dis)Order

The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe

Alessandro Testa

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020) is the first comparative historical anthropology of popular European Carnival in the English language, with a focus on its …
Celebration Studies June 9, 2021

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas

Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Cécile Fromont

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Dr. Cécile Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (Penn State University Press, 2019), demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic …
Celebration Studies March 17, 2021

After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy

Carnival, Politics, and Musical Engagement in Haiti

Rebecca Hope Dirksen

Hosted by Isabel Machado
After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy: Carnival, Politics, and Musical Engagement in Haiti (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a study of carnival, politics, and the musical engagement of ordinary citizens …
Celebration Studies February 10, 2021

The Ethnography of Tourism

Edward Bruner and Beyond

Naomi M. Leite, Quetzil E. Castañeda, Kathleen Adams

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Naomi M. Leite, Quetzil E. Castañeda, and Kathleen M. Adams, The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (Lexington Books, 2019) focuses on the experience-near, interpretive-humanistic approach to tourism studies widely associated …
Celebration Studies February 9, 2021

Jump Up!

Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City

Ray Allen

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Jump Up!: Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a comprehensive history of Trinidadian calypso and steelband music in the diaspora. Blending urban studies, oral history, archival research …
Celebration Studies February 4, 2021

Festive Devils of the Americas

Milla Cozart Riggio, Angela Marino, and Paolo Vignolo

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
The devil is a defiant, nefarious figure, the emblem of evil, and harbinger of the damned. However, the festive devil—the devil that dances—turns the most hideous acts into playful transgressions …
Folklore January 25, 2021

Pussy Hats, Politics, and Public Protest

Rachelle Hope Saltzman

Hosted by Nancy Yan
On January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, hundreds of cities in the U.S. and across the globe organized Women’s Marches in response to Trump’s misogynistic comments …
Celebration Studies January 19, 2021

City of a Million Dreams

A History of New Orleans at Year 300

Jason Berry

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Jason Berry delivers a history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Beyond …
Celebration Studies December 23, 2020

The Oxford Handbook of Christmas

Timothy Larsen

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Dr. Timothy Larsen, The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (Oxford University Press, 2020) provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of all aspects of Christmas across the globe, from the specifically religious to the …
Celebration Studies December 21, 2020

Honk!

A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism

Reebee Garofalo, Erin T. Allen, Andrew Snyder

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism (Routledge, 2020), edited by Reebee Garofalo, Erin T. Allen, and Andrew Snyder, explores a fast-growing and transnational movement of street bands—particularly …
Animal Studies December 18, 2020

Shaving the Beasts

Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain

John Hartigan Jr.

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and shave …
Indian Religions December 11, 2020

White Utopias

The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals

Amanda J. Lucia

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. In White Utopias: The …
Celebration Studies October 26, 2020

Radical Ritual

How Burning Man Changed the World

Neil Shister

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World (Counterpoint, 2019) presents the …
Celebration Studies September 29, 2020

Everyone Loves Live Music

A Theory of Performance Institutions

Fabian Holt

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions (University of Chicago Press), Fabian Holt shows how festivals and other institutions of musical performance have evolved in recent decades …
Celebration Studies September 17, 2020

Public Performances

Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque

Jack Santino

Hosted by Isabel Machado
Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque (University Press of Colorado) offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political …