New Books Network
Celebration Studies
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 …

Subscribe to

Celebration Studies

on the NBN

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 …
Performing Arts 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 …
Music 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 …
Folklore 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 …
American Studies August 19, 2020

Unfair Labor?

American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

David R. M. Beck

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens …
Performing Arts August 10, 2020

New Orleans Carnival Balls

The Secret Side of Mardi Gras, 1870-1920

Jennifer Atkins

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In New Orleans Carnival Balls: The Secret Side of Mardi Gras, 1870-1920 (LSU Press, 2017), Dr. Jennifer Atkins draws back the curtain on the origin of the exclusive Mardi Gras …
American Studies July 29, 2020

Newest Born of Nations

European Nationalist Movements and the Making of the Confederacy

Ann Tucker

Hosted by Christopher Babits
From the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, analysis of European nationalist movements played a critical role in how southerners thought about their new southern …
American Studies June 18, 2020

The Commemoration of Women in the United States

Remembering Women in Public Space

Teresa Bergman

Hosted by Lee Pierce
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Teresa Bergman of the University of the Pacific on The Commemoration of Women in the United States: Remembering …
Celebration Studies June 11, 2020

Southern Decadence in New Orleans

Howard Philips Smith

Hosted by Isabel Machado
Almost a year ago, on my second interview for this podcast, I talked to Howard Philips Smith about Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans …
American Studies June 10, 2020

The Loud Minority

Why Protests Matter in American Democracy

Daniel Q. Gillion

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Scientist Daniel Q. Gillion’s new book, The Loud Minority: Why Protests Matter in American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2020) is an incredibly topical and important analysis of the connection …
American Studies October 28, 2019

This Land Is Their Land

The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving

David J. Silverman

Hosted by Annabel G. LaBrecque
What really happened at “the first Thanksgiving”? In This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (Bloomsbury, 2019), historian David J. Silverman …