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Journal of Festive Studies
ISSN 2641-9939 · H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online · 154 articles in the index
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Journal Article
“Laborers of Joy”
Previous scholarship on the politics of affect in Iran has highlighted the political potential of joy—both within the country and across the diaspora—as a form of resistance against the nation-state’s imposition of sadness and affective mandates following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Building on…
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Journal Article
Reclaiming Streets, Liberating Bodies
During Olinda’s street carnival in the state of Pernambuco located in the northeastern region of Brazil, the streets overflow with energetic crowds that move to the rhythm of trombones and clarinets playing songs familiar to most of the crowd members. The party is formed primarily of people…
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Journal Article
Bird Joy
The harassment of birder Christian Cooper, a Black man, by a white woman in Central Park who was offended that he dared to ask her to leash her dog and in response called the police, served as a catalyst for the creation of Black Birders Week in June of 2020. A group of Black scientists created the…
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Journal Article
Homebrewed Joy and Resistance
This piece focuses on the phenomenon of glitter beers, which are typically brewed in small batches for beer festivals. Drawing on an interview with a Southern California home-brewer and the author's own festival experiences, the piece argues for glitter beer as a surprising emblem of communal joy…
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Journal Article
Indigenous Laughter in Sacred Ritual
Starting in 1987, the author attended and participated in Semana Santa (Easter Week) ritual celebrations in the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) community of Sojawachi in Northern Mexico over a span of ten years. This article discusses the author’s experiences in these celebrations and reflects on Rarámuri…
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Journal Article
Laughing in the Face of Death
Hans Staden is confounded by a Marckaya man who laughs moments before being cannibalized. This paper reads Indigenous laughter in the episode from the first part of True History: The Captivity of Hans Staden (1557) to track joy’s redefinition of confinement. While imprisonment at the hands of the…
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Journal Article
The Black Feast of St. Michael
In Puerto Rico, Afro-descendants celebrated the Fiesta de San Miguel (Feast of St. Michael the Archangel) every year on September 29 with performances that reflected their Afro-creole culture. The festival had deep colonial roots, though its documentation is most robust for nineteenth-century San…
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Journal Article
The Death of Andean Devils, the Life of Counter-Reformation Saints
This article examines the diabladas, or “dances of devils,” performed in honor of Catholic saints in northern Peru, with a specific focus on the cult of Isidro Labrador. Moving beyond the traditional anthropological emphasis on pre-Columbian elements and the historical analysis of “demonization” of…
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Journal Article
Critical Joy Studies
This article theorizes the emergence of critical joy studies as both a scholarly field and an activist movement dedicated to examining how joy functions as a form of political resistance among minoritized communities. Drawing on feminist affect theory, women of color feminisms, and queer of color…
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Journal Article
Fraternal Punch and the Carmagnole
In France, May Day has been festive since it was first celebrated in 1890. As opposed to other histories of May Day in France which concentrate on militant resistance, this article examines two departments (the Loire and Maine-et-Loire) with a wide variety of socialist movements to argue that most…
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Journal Article
Joyful Defiance in Performance
This article argues that the figure of the joyful girl in fiesta served as an important site of contest over race, place, and memory in South Texas during the 1950s. The joyful girl has played a significant, if overlooked, role in fiesta traditions in South Texas: as a cultural symbol onto whom joy…
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Journal Article
Post-Disaster Festivity
On August 5, 1949, a massive earthquake devastated the city of Ambato, Ecuador. As part of the recovery effort, the community organized a festival, Fiesta de la Fruta y de las Flores (Festival of Fruit and Flowers, hereafter FFF). This became an annual event that has grown into one of the most…