Downtown Mardi Gras

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Wade ◽  
Robin Roberts ◽  
Frank de Caro
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding region in 2005, the city debated whether to press on with Mardi Gras or cancel the parades. Ultimately, they decided to proceed. New Orleans’s recovery certainly has resulted from a complex of factors, but the city’s unique cultural life—perhaps its greatest capital—has been instrumental in bringing the city back from the brink of extinction. Voicing a civic fervor, local writer Chris Rose spoke for the importance of Carnival when he argued to carry on with the celebration of Mardi Gras following Katrina: “We are still New Orleans. We are the soul of America. We embody the triumph of the human spirit. Hell. We ARE Mardi Gras”. Since 2006, a number of new Mardi Gras practices have gained prominence. The new parade organizations or krewes, as they are called, interpret and revise the city’s Carnival traditions but bring innovative practices to Mardi Gras. The history of each parade reveals the convergence of race, class, age, and gender dynamics in these new Carnival organizations. Downtown Mardi Gras: New Carnival Practices in Post-Katrina New Orleans examines six unique, offbeat, Downtown celebrations. Using ethnography, folklore, cultural, and performance studies, the authors analyze new Mardi Gras’s connection to traditional Mardi Gras. The narrative of each krewe’s development is fascinating and unique, illustrating participants’ shared desire to contribute to New Orleans’s rich and vibrant culture.

Rebirth

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Future ◽  
Major Disruption ◽  
The City

This final chapter describes how Mardi Gras Indians became more prominent in the public eye during the twentieth century. While they were often associated with violent street clashes during the early decades, by the last quarter of the century, a deliberate move towards harmony and growing cooperation led to more peaceful encounters among Mardi Gras Indians. This development paralleled the city’s growing acceptance and ultimate embrace of the Mardi Gras Indian as a cultural icon of the city. Just a few years into the twentieth century, Hurricane Katrina caused a major disruption in the cultural life of New Orleans, impacting the lives of Mardi Gras Indians and throwing the future of their tradition into doubt. Featured in this chapter is another series of interviews in which Mardi Gras Indians describe their struggles to return to New Orleans and their role in leading the city back to recovery and renewal.

scholarly journals Chapter 3

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Adele Baruch ◽  
Daniel Creek
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right ◽  
Special Circumstances

The special circumstances related to helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—both a natural disaster and a man-made catastrophe—are explored. Stories of individual, formal, and informal networks of helping, alongside stories of exploitation and despair, were shared by participants. Significant to the history of the aftermath of Katrina was the eventual formalizing of some of the informal helping networks, such as the establishment of a musician’s village and performance center in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. The theme of “doing the right thing” echoed throughout our participant interviews, as did “the chance to move beyond angry.” Stories of helping appeared to provide examples of hope to the citizens affected by the storm, as well as encouragement towards purposeful action. The stories of helping, along with participation in altruistic social networks, appear to provide a pathway to the recollection and transformation of traumatic memories.

After the Flood

2018 ◽  
pp. 298-326
Author(s):  
Jason Berry
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Social Controversy ◽  
Black Indians ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Life Force ◽  
The City

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, killing over 1,000 people and displacing over 1 million. As the rebuilding process began, musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, and Social Aid and Pleasure Club members began trickling back. Culture prevailed as politics failed. The life force of music and memory, determined to survive, came back to the shattered city. The hurricane wasn’t the only devastating force: the city had undertaken many urban development projects in Tremé throughout the second half of the 20th century, demolishing historical areas and displacing people. New Orleans has also long suffered from government corruption, and several politicians were arrested throughout the 2000s. Yet hope and vibrancy abound. The 2014 funeral for Larry Bannock, Big Chief of the Golden Starhunters, drew a large gathering of black Indians in a magnificent cultural spectacle. Amidst much political and social controversy, Mayor Mitch Landrieu removed the Robert E. Lee statue from the city in 2017. As New Orleans begins its fourth century, it faces issues of gun violence, poverty, and gentrification, but opportunities from a flourishing digital economy, resurgent music scene, and cultural mecca as well. It is still the vibrant, diverse society composed of people whose roots lie across the world, whose resilience has been a rudder through the storms and violent upheavals throughout the centuries.

City of a Million Dreams

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Berry
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Andrew Jackson ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Michael White ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
The City

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

A minor theory of direct action politics and performance in New Orleans’ economic justice movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110626
Author(s):  
Caroline Keegan
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
The City

In this paper, I develop a minor theory that blurs boundaries between prefigurative direct action and symbolic performance to reconsider strategies for resistance and world-building. Drawing on participant observation and interviews of economic justice organizers and activists in New Orleans in 2015, I examine two events through this minor theory: an immigration reform protest and a collaboratively written skit about income inequality. By emphasizing the performance of protest and the potential for protest through performance, I consider how these events empowered activists to make claims on spaces of the city, develop long-term embodied solidarities, disrupt dominant narratives, and en act more just alternatives. These events took place against the backdrop of intensifying racial and economic inequalities in post-Katrina New Orleans, following a long history of both repression and resistance in the city. Through performance-based direct actions, New Orleans’s economic justice movement moves beyond a reactive politics rooted in outrage and anguish toward a direct action politics constructive of a more just world.

Building Collaborative Partnerships through a Lower Ninth Ward Museum

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Regis ◽  
Rachel Breunlin ◽  
Ronald Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Collaborative Partnerships ◽  
City Center ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Sunday Afternoon ◽  
Birthday Party ◽  
History Of ◽  
Venice Biennale

During a recent Sunday afternoon parade in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Ronald W. Lewis hosted a birthday party for his wife Charlotte, during which he grilled in his backyard near the wraparound deck connecting his house to his museum, the House of Dance & Feathers (HODF). Dedicated to some of the most well known Black cultural traditions in New Orleans, including Mardi Gras Indians and Social and Pleasure Clubs, as well as the history of his neighborhood, it was founded by Ronald in 2003. After massive flooding devastated the neighborhood during Hurricane Katrina, the museum was rebuilt by Project Locus (a design and build nonprofit led by Patrick Rhodes), volunteer architecture students, and the Tulane City Center, and has since been featured in the Venice Biennale and Architectural Record.

Indicators of permanent teeth eruption in children of Tashkent city and comparative assessment with the data of peers of different Russian cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-229
Author(s):  
R. T. Kamilova ◽  
J. A. Kamilov
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Assessment ◽  
Permanent Dentition ◽  
Permanent Teeth ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Left Handed ◽  
Regional Features ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Republic ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Relevance. Characteristics of eruption of secondary teeth is of diagnostic and prognostic interest, is the basis for implementation of targeted therapeutic and preventive measures among children. No research has ever been carried out in Uzbekistan to study an age and gender regional features of secondary teeth eruption. The aim is to determine the timing and symmetry of secondary teeth eruption in children of the city of Tashkent of the Republic of Uzbekistan and comparative assessment with the children of different cities of Russia.Materials and methods. 3,834 children between 3 and 17 years were conducted dental examination. A comparative analysis was made of the initial, intermediate and final periods of eruption of secondary teeth for children of Uzbekistan (Tashkent city) and Russia (Saratov, Izhevsk and Sergach).Results. In Tashkent children of both gender, in most cases, lower teeth were erupted before than their antagonists. In girls, teeth were erupted earlier than their male counterparts. At the initial stage of eruption, asymmetry was more pronounced in boys than in girls, while in the middle and final stages it was more pronounced in the opposite direction. Observed asymmetry of antimere’s teeth were indicated left-handed permanent dentition in boys and right-handed in girls. Children of Tashkent city were observed permanent dentition in one group of teeth 1-16 months earlier, and in others – 1-24 months later than their peers in Russian cities. Revealed differences were more pronounced among boys than among girls. Children in Tashkent differed more from their peers in Sergach and less from those in Izhevsk. Conclusions. Regional peculiarities of permanent dentition in children of Tashkent city and revealed expressed differences with indicators of Russian children are the basis for development of separate age and  gender normative assessment permanent dentition tables for children of Uzbekistan. 

Mind Cure

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
First Americans ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Political Economic

Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.

scholarly journals Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

The Fiery Pacific: Volcanic Eruptions and Settler-State Theatricality in Oceania, 1780–1900

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-392
Author(s):  
Diana Looser
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Red Color ◽  
Form Part ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Grand Opera ◽  
The City

In the closing scene of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt's melodramaLa Tête de mort; ou, Les Ruines de Pompeïa(1827), audiences at Paris's Théâtre de la Gaîté were presented with the spectacular cataclysm of an erupting Mount Vesuvius that invaded the city and engulfed the hapless characters in its fiery embrace. “The theatre,” Pixérécourt writes, “is completely inundated by this sea of bitumen and lava. A shower of blazing and transparent stones and red ash falls on all sides…. The red color with which everything is struck, the terrible noise of the volcano, the screaming, the agitation and despair of the characters … all combine to form this terrible convulsion of nature, a horrible picture, and altogether worthy of being compared to Hell.” A few years later, in 1830, Daniel Auber's grand operaLa Muette de Portici(1828), which yoked a seventeenth-century eruption of Vesuvius with a popular revolt against Spanish rule in Naples, opened at the Théâtre de Monnaie in Brussels. The Belgian spectators, inspired by the opera's revolutionary sentiments, poured out into the streets and seized their country's independence from the Dutch. These two famous examples, which form part of a long genealogy of representing volcanic eruptions through various artistic means, highlight not only the compelling, immersive spectacle of nature in extremis but also the ability of stage scenery to intervene materially in the narrative action and assimilate affective and political meanings. As these two examples also indicate, however, the body of scholarship in literary studies, art history, and theatre and performance studies that attends to the mechanical strategies and symbolic purchase of volcanic representations has tended to focus mainly on Europe; more research remains to be undertaken into how volcanic spectacles have engaged with non-European topographies and sociopolitical dynamics and how this wider view might illuminate our understanding of theatre's social roles.

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