2009 ASTR Conference

Kevin Landis, University of Colorado
Carlos Uriona, the lead actor for the renowned Double Edge Company, began his career as a street performer in Buenos Aires, Argentina with a company called Diablomundo. He has memories of creating street art in the midst of the Dirty War of the 1970s in which artists, mentors and community [...]

AnnMarie T. Saunders, University of Maryland
Challenging memberships in social, racial, and national identity groups as well as delineations between public and private life, Cornyation – part cultural and political parody, part drag show – proudly bills itself as “the raunchiest, cheapest event of Fiesta.” Part of a nation-wide fad of historic pageantry, Fiesta San Antonio [...]

Milla Riggio, Trinity College
In Act IV, scene ii of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Aaron the Moor tells boys who have asked him to pray for his mistress, who is also their mother: “The gods are not on our side; pray to the devil, boys.” The idea that one must look to the devil when [...]

Jimmy A. Noriega, Cornell University
On May 1, 2006, hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States came together to rally under the banner: “Day without an Immigrant.” Working to draw attention to growing anti-immigrant legislation and sentiment, the campaign intended to demonstrate the presence of the immigrant community and its vital role in American [...]

J.L. Murdoch, Bowling Green State University
A popular and therapeutic form of entertainment in historic Korea, the folk masked dance-drama form of Talchum was nearly lost during the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century. Each of the 13 regional iterations begins with a processional of musicians and colorfully costumed and masked [...]

Jenna Kubly, Tufts University
Although the United States did not enter the First World War until 1917, popular entertainment and community practices from 1914 onward reflected the looming presence of the war in the American psychological landscape. However, the theatrical scene from 1914 to 1918 has received scant attention.
Historical re-enactments and pageants had been in [...]

Kate M. Kokontis, University of California-Berkeley
In the Bay Area, an important hub of artistic and cultural activity during the Chicano Movement, autumn is a flurry of Day of the Dead events, ranging from private ceremonies conducted by spiritual practitioners to corporate-sponsorship street fairs to altar exhibits in the art galleries of cultural centers. Underscoring the [...]

Charmel A. Joiner, Ohio State University.
One of the most effective forms of public display conducted by African American men in the form of a political march or parade was Barnstorming. Unlike marches led by civil rights activists, the Black Panther Party or the Nation of Islam, whose agenda was justice and equality for black [...]

Courtney Elkin Mohler, California State University
Santa Barbara’s “La Fiesta,” or “Old Spanish Days,” festival is well noted for its function as a regularly renewed public performance of “nostalgia” for a long lost “authentic identity.” In its current form, “La Fiesta” comprises five days of events including a rodeo, nightly performances of traditional Spanish and [...]

Christian DuComb, Brown University
Almost every New Year’s Day since 1901, thousands of Mummers—most of them white, working class men from South Philadelphia—have paraded up Broad Street, performing everything from tightly choreographed pageants to carnivalesque displays of social inversion. This paper will trace a genealogy of the Mummers “wench,” a popular parade figure traditionally performed [...]

Edwin Emilio Corbin Gutiérrez, Northwestern University
This essay analyzes Superbarrio’s performances against “corrupt authorities and voracious landlords” through relajo. Superbarrio, Mexico City’s masked crusader, blurs the boundaries of formal political-legal procedures and popular cultural performances through protests that deploy poignant parody and create alternative spaces of community-based law. Using historiography, I claim that through his performance [...]

Jason Bush, The Ohio State University
Danza de las Tijeras (scissors dance) is a colorful acrobatic ritual dance from the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac in the central Andes of Peru. The dancers, almost exclusively male, are ritual specialists who mediate between the rural Andean community and the spiritual entities of the natural landscape [...]

Rachel Bowditch, Arizona State University
Over the past twenty years, from 1986 until today, Burning Man has transformed from a personal healing ritual into a contemporary cultural phenomenon where ritual, religion, visual art, and performance collide on a magnificent scale. My paper Rehearsing Utopia: Staging Identity, Politics, and Political Performance at the Burning Man Festival is [...]

Pablo Assumpção, New York University
Intended as a contribution towards the advancing of new methods and modes of inquiry in carnival research, this paper departs from ethnographic data in order to present Brazilian carnival as an experience lived and elaborated on the level of the bodily senses. I will argue that an anthropology of the senses [...]