The Newberry Library Research and Education Division

The Center for Research in Festive Culture at Northern Illinois University fosters research about the world's past and present festive cultures by means of conferences and other communications among interested scholars or informed amateurs of festivities. Its programs are designed to answer three needs:

• To extend intellectual exchange about this subject beyond national and normal professional boundaries

• To rethink the idea of festive culture itself, broadening the usual idea of its subject-matter.

• To provide particular space for the work of younger scholars pursuing these subjects.

Fall 2009 Seminars

Past Seminars

Seminars, Fall 2009: Religion and Festivity

 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2:00-5:00 P.M.

• Samuel Kinser, Northern Illinois University: Paradigm and Street: Formative Contexts of black-Indian Festive Ritual in New Orleans.

• Karen Richman, University of Notre Dame, Indiana: Congregating By Cassette: Migration and Transnational Ritual Spaces

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2:00-5:00 P.M.

• John Marino, University of California at San Diego: The Festival of San Giovanni in Renaissance Florence and Naples

• Matt Sakakeeny, Tulane University, New Orleans: Instruments of Violence: Brass Bands, Jazz Funerals, and the Death of Young Black Men

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2:00-5:00 P.M.

• Shelley Salamensky, University of California at Los Angeles: Diaspora Disney? “Jewface”, “Jewfaçade”, and “Jewish” festivals in Poland and the Russian Federation

• Emily Winerock, University of Toronto: Sacred or Sacrilegious? Conflicted Attitudes Towards Festive Dancing in Early 17th Century England
  

While there is no fee to attend the Seminar, participants should register in advance. Additionally, copies of the papers will be available about one month before the lecture. To register or to request a copy of the paper, please contact Leslie Kan at kanl@newberry.org. Requested papers will be sent to your email address. If you do not have an email address, send your mailing address to Leslie Kan, Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610.

Past Seminars: Fall 2008

• Hélène Bellour, Independent Researcher, Chicago, and Jeffrey Chock, Photographer, Port of Spain, Trinidad: Looking at Mas’: Evolution in the Trinidadian Carnival

• "Martinje: Mock Bishops, New Wine, and Liturgical Parody in Contemporary Zagrib."
  Martin Walsh, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Katherine Wright, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL: Greek Orthodox Easter in Present-Day Greece: Rituals and Fireworks

• Kenneth Bilby, Columbia College, Chicago: Conjuring the Ghost of John Canoe: Re-imagining a “Slave Festival” in the New South and the Caribbean

• Gillian Weiss, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland: Freedom March: Barbary Slave Processions in Early Modern Europe

Programs for Scholars