Anthony Ochuko Adah. (University of Papua New Guinea). Festivals as Post-colonial Counter-Discourse.

This paper focuses on festivals in Papua New Guinea drama as post-colonial discursive practice. It draws from selected plays by Leo Hannet ("The Ungrateful Daughter"), Nora Vagi-Brash ("Taurama") and Peter Kerpie ("Voices from the Ridge"). The paper argues that in writing their plays, Papua New Guinea playwrights have appropriated their traditional festivals not only to reinscribe and celebrate their identities, but more importantly as the melting point of dramatic conflict. Thus, celebrations which are therapeutic also serve as strategies for interrogating the hegemony of canonical texts and representations.

Ece Algan. (Ohio University). Bathing as a Ritual: Turkish Baths or Hammams.

Cleaning is a ritual itself. Even though the modern era has reduced this ritual to a daily, private, and hygienic routine, we have abandoned neither the meaning of this relaxation and purification ritual nor its socialization aspect in public baths like saunas and hammams (Turkish baths). In this paper I seek to explain how the ritual of bathing in a Turkish bath is perceived and interpreted by Islamic thought, as well as how hammams were construed by Christian mores. Describing the bathing rituals of women in Turkish baths, I also interrogate the social significance of hammams for Muslim women.

Georgios Anagnostu. (The Ohio State University). Roundtable Discussion: The Invention of Heritage in Festival "Contact Zones ".

See abstract under Amy Shuman for roundtable description.

Barry Ancelet. (University of Southwestern Louisiana). The Unbearable Lightness of Begging: Carnivalesque Laughter in the South Louisiana Mardi Gras.

In this paper, supported by slides and based on some theories on the nature of carnival laughter, including those of Bakhtin, Lindahl, Fabre, and Davis, I will explore the nature of the carnivalesque laughter that is at the heart of the Mardi Gras. This laughter is generated by the festival play of bands of masked and costumed "beggars" who roam the countryside gathering the ingredients for a communal gumbo. In exchange for these ingredients, the Mardi Gras runners sing and dance for the members of the household. They also provide laughter by improvising visual, verbal, gestural and theatrical "jokes" during what can be some rather intense begging rituals that sometimes border on extortion. These "jokes" can be based on slapstick, political or social satire and parody; they can be simple, complex, innocent, edgy, clever, or obscene; and they work most effectively when the "punch line" is evident.

Chris Antonsen. (The Ohio State University). The Unwanted Folk Festival: Identity Politics During a Village's Wells Dressing Week.

Eyam is popularly known as the "Plague Village" because the villagers quarantined themselves in the bubonic plague epidemic of 1665-66. This paper will briefly illustrate the tradition of wells dressing as it is carried out in Eyam in order to look in greater depth at economic and social circumstances that have placed Eyam's wells dressers unwillingly at center stage in a crowded, bustling, tourist-charged festival atmosphere that they find distasteful. This paper will also articulate the connection between local economic and social forces and the village's historical, cyclical self-image as a community under siege.

Joe Austin. (Bowling Green State University). Ill Legal Conventions? Graffiti and Hip Hop at the 1997 Scribble Jam.

Past scholarship conceptualized youth cultures self-authored public displays as "resistant rituals," and the appropriation of subcultural style by the mass market as a type of co-optation of that resistant potential. But what conceptual frameworks are appropriate for understanding an "illegal" public art--graffiti--when its subcultural creators begin to establish their own national/international festivals for "legal" display? This question is pursued through some of the contradictions and possibilities present within the 1997 Scribble Jam held in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Robin B. Balthrope. (California State University). Abortion Foes March on Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade After Twenty-Five Years and a Public Display of Sorrow and Disapproval.

From 1973 on, a sizable segment of the American population publicly mourns the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision, which despite subsequent restrictions is still operative. The rhetoric of the abortion conflict--the use of terms like pro-life and pro-choice--reflects a larger conflict in American society, one which encompasses the role of law in enforcing morals and the proper place of women.

Julian Belyn. (The Ohio State University). The Hare Krishna Believers.

The Hare Krishna movement started in the U.S. in the late 1960s, and is still in existence today. Followers (devotees) living in a local Hare Krishna house were interviewed about their faith, way of life and dress. The devotees dress and adorn their bodies in a symbolic way that has specific meaning to their ideology. The devotees' life styles also reflect their commitment to their religious ideology.

Hande Birkalan. (Indiana University). Ceremonies From a Squatter Neighborhood in Istanbul.

Based on the fieldwork conducted in the summer of 1997 in Istanbul, my paper focuses on circumcision ceremonies in a squatter neighborhood as yet another way to understand the margins of human life. I argue first that ceremonies create social space where the ties of family, neighborhood and kin can be re-affirmed, and second that they connect to the memory of the migrants' village which enables them to craft their identity. Constructed according to the shared knowledge of the participants, these ceremonies are not closures to the daily experiences, rather, they punctuate everyday life.

Rachel Buff. (Bowling Green State University). Casino-Era Powwow Culture: Gender and Generation Down the Red Road.

Drawing on ethnographic and secondary source research, this paper explores contemporary urban powwow practices. Contemporary powwows are, in Eric Hobsbawm's words, "invented traditions". Powwow Princesses, MCs and Drum Group Stars serve not only as "goodwill ambassadors," translating alterity into a language that tourists can understand, but as powerful signs and actors in the landscape of contemporary Indian culture. My focus on gender and generation in this paper comes out of my increasing conviction that these are the terrains on which transmigrant peoples struggle for their right to be dual citizens--to be entitled with respect to the dominant nation, as well as to their narratives of homeland, exile and return.

Kevin Callahan. (Indiana University). "Performing Inter-Nationalism" in Stuttgart, 1904-1907: French and German Socialist Nationalism and the Political Culture of an International Socialist Congress.

Historians have left the cultural dimensions of the Second International unexplored and unexplained. Examining the 7th International Socialist Congress held in Stuttgart in 1907 reveals that French and German socialists rearranged the structure of the public discourse on the nation by articulating a socialist nationalism within the framework of internationalism; hence, an inter-nationalism. This articulation took place through political symbolism, ritual, and public display. The Stuttgart congress represented a well-orchestrated public spectacle designed to perform an "inter-nationalism" which would sustain the socialist cause and intimidate bourgeois governments. The success of the congress was, however, undermined by the inability of French and German socialists to reconcile their conflicting versions of inter-nationalism.

John Cash. (Indiana University). "Heritage Not Hate:" The Confederate Battle Flag as Symbol in Civil War Reenacting.

The rhetoric addressing events in the Southern states concerning the officially sanctioned display of the "Stars and Bars," or the Confederate battle flag, is evidence of the continuing debate on the meaning of this historical artifact. Opponents of the sanctioned display point to the long association of this symbol with hate groups. Defenders consider the flag an inheritance representing noble self-sacrifice, honorable men and women, and family heritage. They argue that the battle flag represents "heritage, not hate," implying that it represents more than a single group's historical experience.

John Chetro-Szivos. (University of Massachusetts). Notre Dame de Saint Rosaire Festival: The Making of Symbol, and Construction of Personhood in Acadian American Culture.

This paper is an ethnographic study which examines an annual community event that takes place among members of an Acadian American community in Massachusetts. I explore how a church fair and the production of a traditional ethnic dish are used to memorialize a culture. The production of food is a symbolic act that distinguishes the members of this community, and helps them celebrate their culture and reconstitute their lives. This event gives its members a context to give expression to a central tenant of their culture.

Leigh Corrette. (Bowling Green State University). "I came for the hotel rates..." Academics on Holiday: An Exploration of How Academics Use and Interpret Conference Culture.

This work investigates how academics "use" and interpret academic conferences which they attend. It would seem that conferences serve a multitude of functions in terms of career advancement, professional networking, exploration of ideas and research issues, and as a space of "holiday." While cultural critics may berate conferences as symbols of erudite isolation, there appears to be relatively little written on how scholars actually perceive and use conferences. I intend to explore conferences as liminal spaces where academics, when away from various professional or personal constraints, may engage in multiple roles. It then behooves us to understand the liminality of conference license.

Ferris Werbin Crane. (California State Polytechnic University). Seeing in the Dark: Doctoring the Individual and Community through Ceremony and Ritual with Special Emphasis on Visual Symbology.

Native American ceremonies and rituals offer encompassing paradigms for conflict resolution and doctoring of both the individual and the community. Within a compressed system of belief, language, image, sound, taste and touch, Bear Medicine and Yuwepi ceremonies, conducted in the dark, exemplify strength. Visual symbology is of special interest as it represents what cannot be easily verbalized. (In honor of Robert Stead, Lakota medicine man and chief, Rosebud, S.D., who saved the presenter's life)

Robert Darcy. (University of Wisconsin--Madison). Montaigne, Blanchot, Derrida, and the Politics of Eulogy.

When Derrida eulogized his friend, Paul de Man, he saw death as an occasion for making a claim of friendship in a series of public lectures. Interestingly, both Montaigne's famous essay "On Friendship" and Blanchot's collection of essays organized under the title of Friendship discuss their topic in terms of dead friends. Why are discussions of friendship associated with funeral eulogy, engaged under conditions of grief rather than celebration? This paper interrogates the degree of relief and fantasy involved in making a public claim of friendship for someone when death elides the fragile politics of that claim.

Madeline Duntley. (College of Wooster). Hopeful Anniversaries: Commemoration and Diversity in Seattle's Japanese American Protestant Churches.

Within two miles of each other in Seattle are five historic, century-old mainline Protestant Japanese-American churches in an urban neighborhood that is 36% Asian American. Increasing ethnic diversity requires these churches to confront the issue of "Japanese identity." Religious ritual and commemorative five-year Anniversary cycles project a collective ethnic memory and hopeful future appropriate to a multicultural membership. These celebrations effectively engraft each church's unique history to the Christian story, claiming kinship with the Japanese "ancestors" and Biblical "family."

Todd Estes. (Oakland University). Public Display, Political Protest, and the Rights of Citizens: Anti-Jay Treaty Crowds, Conflict, and the Public Sphere in the 1790s.

The numerous meetings, protests and demonstrations against the Jay Treaty in 1795 were not simply denunciations of the measure. Rather, they were also vehicles by which citizens claimed for themselves a newer, more modern understanding of the role of the public in matters of political policy. This new conception swept away older notions of deference to authorities and furthered an ongoing struggle over inclusion in the political public sphere. This paper will examine the public displays and demonstrations over the Jay Treaty to reveal both the political attitudes being expressed by the participants and the development of 1790s political culture.

Marjorie Estivill. (Indiana University). Using Sex to Sell a Rally: An Analysis of Two Public Displays of Resistance.

During an October weekend in 1997, the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University commemorated its 50th anniversary, the Concerned Women for America staged a rally decrying the Kinsey Institute, and some people staged a "lascivious exhibition" to celebrate the loosening of sexual mores. This paper analyzes speech and symbolic communication during those events with a focus on the rhetorical use of references to sexual behavior. Videotapes from the events are supplied by Bart Everson, publisher of a talk show series appearing on Free Speech TV and on the internet at: rox.com

Marcia Gaudet. (University of Southwestern Louisiana). Carnival on 12th Street: Reasserting Creole Identity Through Festive Play.

Mardi Gras in the predominantly Creole and African American 12th Street area of Lafayette, Louisiana, reflects both the cultural diversity of Creoles of Color and the dynamics of asserting Creole identity in a region more widely known as Cajun Country. The festive play of the Creole Mardi Gras incorporates Afro-Caribbean performance styles as well as French Southwest Louisiana Mardi Gras chants and rituals. This presentation will explore how Creole identity is reflected, challenged, asserted, and celebrated in the intercultural borrowings and negotiations of this carnival performance.

Mary Gebhart. (Michigan State University). Tribe 8, A New Way of "Rubbing Up Against" the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival: Festival as a Discursive Style of Lesbian Community Building.

My purpose is to evaluate the 1994 and 1996 performances of the all-lesbian punk band, Tribe 8 and the ways in which they function as sites of on-going negotiation, as well as to shed light on the ways in which these acts add to the foundation upon which lesbian communities, within the festival context, are constructed. Tribe 8's performances can be used to evaluate the ways
in which public space is utilized to express what has been traditionally seen as private (i.e. female sexuality, women acting out rage and anger) as well as examining the ways in which lesbians upend societal definitions of gender and power.

Jim Gelvin. (UCLA). (Re)Presenting Nations in Syria at the End of Empire.

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, two distinct nationalist blocs competed to impose their vision of political community within Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan). Each bloc mounted demonstrations to win support from the population, display symbolically what it deemed the proper ordering of society, and disseminate a specific rendering of the national narrative that would vindicate its right to rule. Reading these demonstrations as texts enables the historian to understand the integrated symbol systems promoted by political rivals and the process by which mass politics spread in the Arab Middle East.

Philip A. Grant, Jr.. (Pace University). American Press Reaction to the 1963 "March on Washington".

On August 28, 1963, two hundred thousand Americans, led by Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the historic "March on Washington." The highlight of the "March on Washington" was Doctor King's "I Have Dream" address at the Lincoln Memorial. The events of August 28, 1963 attracted prime coverage in every daily newspaper in the United States. Among the prominent publications editorializing on the "March on Washington" were the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Houston Post, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Portland Oregonian.

Brian Gregory. (Western Kentucky University). Breakthrough into Ritual: Experiencing St. Mary's of the Barrens.

Marked places abound within the landscape of this former seminary, and these places have become personally meaningful to members of the resident community of retired Vincentian priests. Moving through the landscape becomes ritual as community members interact with the landscape and incorporate it into individual expressions of faith and personal history. Using Leonard Norman Primiano's concept of vernacular religion, this paper focuses on a sometimes neglected area: material manifestations of religious faith, using experiential ethnography to understand not the precepts of "official" religion, but the personal, sometimes idiosyncratic, expressions of religion as it is lived.

Larry Griffin. (Dyersburg State Community College). Slide Presentation: Costumes of Carnival.

Larry Griffin photographed these promenaders in their carnival costumes on the Evening of Mardi Gras, 1996, in Venice, Italy.

Larry Griffin. (Dyersburg State Community College). Masking and Racial Passing at Mardi Gras.

Lyle Saxon's "Have a Good Time While You Can: An Impression of the Carnival in New Orleans" (1928) is his 1903 memoir of a grandfather who transfers his parental role for his grandson to a friend's African-American servant so that the child may join in the Mardi Gras festivities. Parental authority supersedes racial separation, and Robert, the servant, manipulates the opportunities that masking affords them. Robert and the boy experience both the Mardi Gras of African-Americans and the Mardi Gras of whites that segregation prohibits. In how they use the masks, they easily pass back and forth between the two.

Susan Charles T. Groth. (University of Pennsylvania). Here We Go 'Round the Hanukkah Bush: Holiday Celebration in Mixed Religious Heritage Families.

When people from different religious backgrounds form a family, their religious diversity gives them potential for added conflict and added creativity. Not only do religiously diverse families have differing theologies to contend with, they have differing value systems and expressive cultures to negotiate--and all three factors can conflict. This paper concentrates on families affiliated with Christianity, Judaism, and Unitarian Universalism as they celebrate Jewish and Christian-derived holidays the "time bombs" of family religious life. This paper builds on scholarship which addresses creativity and agency in ritual and celebration, such as the works of Barbara Myerhoff, Ronald Grimes, Jack Santino, and Penina Adelman.

Stacey L. Hann. (Indiana University). Belly Dancing and Ant Dancers: Comraderie and Memory at Veteran's Reunions.

Across the U.S. combat veterans and their families hold annual reunions sharing in commemorative and leisure activities. Like family reunions, these groups also resemble the fictive kinship networks described by Winter (1995). Dispersed throughout veterans reunions are an abundance of creative and meaningful invented traditions. Reunions provide opportunities to struggle, celebrate, laugh, and argue over the memories of combat, allegiance to nation, and relationship to family. This paper suggests that reunions function as a site for veterans to actively "define their patriotism" and that collective memory is forged and reshaped through ritual enactments of fictive kinship networks (Bodnar 1997).

Gregory Hansen. (Indiana University). Iowa Folklife Montage.

Iowa Folklife Montage is a short documentary video on the Iowa Folklife Festival. The video's montage style of re-presentation is often associated with postmodernism. Its content, however, offers a view of folk culture that is more complicit with older ideas about the subject matter of folklore. In this way, the idea of folklife that emerges through the video challenges ways in which we construct ideas of traditionality, modernity, and postmodernity through folklife festivals and similar display events.

Leslie J. Hurley. (John Jay College of Criminal Justice). Beauty on Display: Beth Henley's Pageants.

In the Miss Firecracker Contest and The Debutante Ball, Beth Henley creates female characters who squirm feebly and haplessly through the pageantry of beauty contests and debutante "coming out" parties. These social rituals are solely and specifically female; in both cases, reputation and redemption are on the line. My paper examines specifically the playwright's use and rejection of female stereotypes in these plays, and her development of female characters against a social backdrop that values beauty as a commodity.

Cathy M. Jackson. (University of Missouri). Commemoration: The Unbroken Circle of Jesse James' Life.

This ethnography incorporates scholarship on public memory, and historical and legend research to explore the life of Jesse James and how one commemoration, the 1997 Pony Express/Jesse James Weekend, partially insures that the Missouri outlaw never will be stricken from public memory. In this study, commemorations become "cultural productions" echoing the work of Dean MacCannel (1976:85). Twenty-seven interviews with volunteers, reenactors, and visitors show that the cultural production contributes to the public memory of Jesse James. This study also suggest that the weekend's scheduled events, the people who volunteered, and the festival's creator, Gary Chilcote, are all memory makers.

William Jankowiak and Todd White. (UNLV). The Spectator and Performer in Four New Orleans Celebrations: An Exercise Guarded Fellowship.

Festival research focuses primarily on the performer, neglecting in the process the spectator. Moreover, most festival research does not examine behavior patterns found in ordinary life and thus we have no base line to distinguish between the typical and the atypical. The results of an extensive field study that examine spectator behavior during two New Orleans celebrations: The Christmas Parade (September), Saturday Night during Mardi Gras, and Mardi Gras itself (Fat Tuesday). The results of this study were then compared with behavior exhibit in a non-festival Saturday evening. The findings of our study and its implications for understanding the Carnival and other festival traditions will be discussed.

Mitchell Kachun. (Southeast Community College). African American Emancipation Celebrations in Central New York State: Patterns of Regional Networking in the Nineteenth Century.

African American emancipation celebrations, by the mid-nineteenth century, had evolved into huge public rituals that served various social, cultural, and political functions for free blacks in the northern states. A number of small and scattered African American communities in upstate New York coordinated their efforts to develop a particularly strong and sustained regional
commemorative tradition between the 1840s and 1880s. This paper will place these regional celebrations in the broader context of African American commemoration and historical memory, while examining some of the functions the celebrations served within the region.

Kathryn Kelley. (The Ohio State University). Roundtable Discussion: The Invention of Heritage in Festival "Contact Zones ".

See abstract under Amy Shuman for roundtable description.

Esther S. Kim. (The Ohio State University). Playful Ritual and Ritualistic Play in Traditional Korean Mask Dance-Drama, Talch'um.

Traditional Korean mask dance-drama, or "talch'um," was enjoyed by the members of the peasant class who were able to temporarily escape their oppressed status by participating in the intricate performative event of play and ritual. During the performances, the ruling class was mocked, laws were subverted, and reality was challenged. The ultimate goal of talch'um is the state of "sin-myung" in which the performers and the audience merge and both become cleansed through the redefinition of the situation. Talch'um is a sacred ritual, yet the highest sacredness is reached through play. In this paper, I use the theories of Turner, Huizinga, Callois, Schechner, and Gadamer to examine this complex tradition.

Minjeong Kim. (The Ohio State University). Power and the Ku Klux Klan.

As a part of American history, Ku Klux Klan has continued as a hate group against the black, Jews, and Catholics as well as other ethnic groups. Their robes and hoods, which symbolize their belief in God help them continue their secretive behaviors against their enemies. Even though they have been losing power since 1920s, they still remain as a mysterious group throughout the U.S.

Kerry Lamare. (University of Southwestern Louisiana). St. Joseph's Day Altars in the Catholic and Spiritualist Churches.

In Louisiana the celebration of St. Joseph's day with a food laden altar is considered primarily an Italian Catholic tradition. While the tradition is strongly rooted in Italian American culture, a parallel celebration is observed by members of the Spiritualist church, which is traditionally African American. The Spiritualist tradition has been adapted from the Catholic and it retains many of the same characteristics. It should not, however, be read as simply an imitation of the Catholic practice. The two traditions as practiced by members of the different churches have common elements and each serves as a unique centerpiece for religious observation.

Tasha Lewis. (The Ohio State University). The Zulu Krewe and Mardi Gras.

The Mardi Gras Krewe of Zulu began in 1909 as a New Orleans' neighborhood group with the purpose of participating in the annual Mardi Gras festivities, as well as serving as a benevolent aid society for the local African-American community. Traditionally, African-Americans were excluded from the all male, all white krewes of New Orleans; this exclusion represented the social reality of the Zulus' members and their mockery of this reality was manifested through the costumes of Mardi Gras.

Ellen Litwicki. (SUNY at Fredonia). Showering the Bride: A Ritual of Gender and Consumption.

Middle-class notions of gender and the emergent consumer society intersected in the turn-of-the-century wedding, transforming it into an extravaganza of consumption by and for women. The bridal shower emerged at this time as an occasion that existed solely for the purpose of female friends and relatives presenting gifts to the bride-to-be. This paper will argue that the rituals of the bridal shower confirmed and enacted the wedding's new focus on consumption and on the bride. Although the rituals masked the shower's blatant consumerism, revealing some uneasiness with the new materialism, they reveled in domesticity as women's "proper" role.

Scott Magelssen. (University of Minnesota). The Staging of History: Theatrical, Temporal, and Economic Borders of "Historyland".

Historyland, a Hayward, Wisconsin tourist attraction in the 1950s and 1960s, re-created the history of the area's logging industry by transporting Hayward's old buildings to a site outside of the town where they were aesthetically arranged into "Old Hayward." Its tourists could visit a "real life" lumberjack town, shop in the old buildings, and encounter an "authentic" Indian Village, with "full-blooded Indians" that trapped animals and prepared wild rice. This paper explores the means of "heritage production " that Hayward's tourism economy engaged in, and examines the performative elements of this staging of history.

Marjorie L. McLellan. (Miami University). Contesting Gender Roles and Re-scripting Family in Celebration.

In this presentation, I will discuss how and to what extent families adapt or transform celebrations and self-representation in response to changing gender roles. I will compare results from case studies of celebration in two contemporary American families as well as representations of gender in family photographs.

Andrea Mericle. (Western Kentucky University). Sacred and Secular Festival Celebrations at Holden Village.

The purpose of this paper will be to explore how Holden Village, an isolated retreat center located in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, celebrates itself as a community and reveals its values and world views through the annual July Fourth festival and Jubilee! Day festival. I will explore how festival participants and observers use parody and inversion to make fun of these values and world views within these socially sanctioned festivals. I will use my own experiences as a participant-observer at these festivals, as well as the Holden Village Mission Statement, as the point of departure for my analysis.

Eileen and Seamus Metress. (University of Toledo). The Belfast Anti-Internment Parade and its Sociohistorical Context.

Each year since August 9,1971, Irish nationalists have marched in Belfast to protest the introduction on that date of internment without trial. The early morning internment raids of August 1971, were a significant element in propelling the non-violent civil rights movement into a full scale guerrilla war between British forces and the IRA. Many observers believe that internment along with Bloody Sunday in January of 1972 were the major politicizing forces of early 1970s in the six counties. This presentation will consider this annual anti-government parade as a politically useful mode of communication that builds, maintains, and confronts power relations in the Northern Statelet. Some comparison to loyalists' parades commemorating the 17th Century Battle of the Boyne and Siege of Derry will be considered. Our analysis will attempt to place this event within the immediate and long term sociohistorical dynamics of British and Irish history.

Diana Mincyte. (Bowling Green State University). The Dead Against the Government? Social and Political Changes in the Celebration of the Day of the Dead in Lithuania.

The Day of the Dead, celebrated on November 1st, is an important seasonal holiday in Lithuania. It follows the Christian tradition of commemoration of the dead. During the Soviet period, the festival was considered "unsanctioned." The public attendance of the graveyards on the Day of the Dead revealed the people's resistance to the Soviet regime. After the festival was recognized as an official state holiday in 1991, it is now facing new challenges as it encounters the Western culture in Lithuania. This presentation, thus, aims to show how social and political changes are reflected in the content of the celebration.

Rosalind Urbach Moss. (Mary Baldwin College--Richmond Center). Rescuing May Day: Contemporary Countercultural Festivals and Pageant in Two States.

By the 1960s, American celebrations of May Day had been tamed into school-sponsored wrapping of May poles with crepe paper and genteel daisy chain convocations, its use as a worker's day of protest discredited by its identification with Communism. Even so, its rich histories of carnival, disruption and resistance, made May Day ripe for appropriation and reinvention, a task undertaken locally by communities with roots in late 1960s and 1970s counterculture. This paper will examine two local May Day traditions, a large community celebration in Minneapolis and a smaller one in rural southern Rhode Island, that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s.

Olga Najera-Ramirez. (University of California, Santa Cruz). La Charreada!: Rodeo a la Mexican.

Written, Produced, and Directed by Olga Najera-Ramirez. This half-hour video examines the Mexican charreada (or Mexican rodeo event) as practiced in the United States. Based on five seasons of ethnographic field work centered in Sunol, California and extending to other parts of the United States and Mexico, this video provides an intimate view of the charreada as
described by mexicanos living on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. In particular, it focuses on the charreada as means through which notions of Mexican identity are articulated, negotiated, and disseminated. Produced in English and Spanish (English subtitles are provided for Spanish).

Michael Robert Newberg. (Ohio University). Representations of Meals and Utopian Feast in American Film.

Comedic film scenes in which a meal is prepared, served, or consumed often represent the signs of carnivalesque. This essay examines comedic food scenes in American films which signify an excess of food, language, and drink. Mikhail Bakhtin's "carnival" presents an alternative vision of the festive ritual as a temporary suspension of hierarchical distinctions, conventional rules, and linguistic decorum. While media and modern society offer characteristics of Bakhtin's carnivalesque activities, the aspects of a truly utopian feast are rarely given full representation in American film.

Johnston A. K. Njoku. (Western Kentucky University). The Recontextualization of "Iri Ji Ohuu"A Nigerian Agricultural Village Ritual in the American Industrial City of Houston, Texas: The Problem of Proper Interpretation.

The issues of relocation and proper interpretation of Nigerian rituals in the United States are explored. Based upon the "Iri Ji," festival in Houston, Texas, the paper demonstrates and explains ritual as prescribed actions that emanate from folk belief and tradition. The author makes two main generalizations: First, a ritual is a legitimate way of looking at prevailing ethnic customs in America. Second, a proper interpretation of immigrant rituals must include elements from the primary cultures of the immigrants and from their social conditions in the New environment.

Dorothy Noyes. (The Ohio State University). Roundtable Discussion: The Invention of Heritage in Festival "Contact Zones ".

See abstract under Amy Shuman for roundtable description.

Irina Ozernoy. (UCLA). Public Displays of Ado(o)rnment: Decoration as Liminality at MediaWest Con.

Although the stereotypical view of a media fan is that of an asocial, obsessive loner, fans are actually parts of a wide-swept creative community, complete with its own traditions. Media conventions, a particularly beloved tradition, present a forum for fans to interact with one another and display their creativity. At a particular convention, MediaWest*Con, participants celebrate their identities as fans of a particular show or genre by creating elaborate displays that they affix to the doors to their hotel rooms. This phenomenon of door decoration creates a dynamic space for artistic interaction, adding to the carnivalesque qualities of the convention.

Ji Hye Park. (The Ohio State University). Heavy Metal Bands.

In many recent years, heavy metal bands with their audience have formed their own particular appearance with symbolic meanings. Heavy metal fashion is represented by the uniform of blue jeans, black T shirts, boots, and black leather or jeans jackets with tattoos. This fashion style may enable them to express attitudes, values, and norms of their own in our society.

Gari-Anne Patzwald. (Lexington Theological Seminary). Shepherds in the Field: The Megiddo Mission and the Celebration of True Christmas.

Since 1906, the Megiddo Mission of Rochester, New York has excited considerable local interest with its springtime celebration of "True Christmas." For the celebration, the church is decorated with spring flowers and a program is presented which features costumed drama and band and vocal music. Until the 1960s, a business adjacent to the church featured True Christmas window displays. Newspaper advertisements and True Christmas cards with spring themes were part of the celebration until the 1950s. The Mission also campaigned against the celebration of Christmas in December with tracts and newspaper advertisements.

Felicity Paxton. (University of Pennsylvania). Killing Killers: An Examination of Death Penalty Practice and Discourse.

My paper explores execution praxis and the crucial role played by the media in (re)constructing state killings for the public. Focusing on Karla Faye Tucker's execution and Dateline's coverage of it, I demonstrate the myriad ways in which her violence is contrasted with the state's. Where Tucker's killings are Bacchanalian and impulsive, Tucker's killing is restrained and considered. Where Tucker's victims are mutilated, bloody and vengeful, Tucker-as-victim is not violated, does not bleed and is not angry. Ritually prepared for her death and killed by technology, Tucker, we are assured, goes gently into her goodnight. I examine the implications of--and the contradictions within--such framing.

Felicity Paxton. (University of Pennsylvania). Bloody Scenes, Screaming Teens and those Troublesome Queens: When Prom Promises are not Met.

Durkheim's assertion, "A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal," is useful in understanding the symbolism of high school proms, modern mating rituals whose queens symbolize regenerative promise. But for every idealized prom queen in popular prom discourse there is a dysfunctional counterpart who uses her power in anti-social ways. My paper examines the bad prom queens of film and fiction whose actions threaten their communities. I analyze the misogynist conservatism of texts like Carrie--where young women's power is constructed as horrific--and how such narratives intersect with the feminist project of Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.

Kristine Peleg. (University of Arizona). Silent at the Wall: Women in Israeli Remembrance Day Ceremonies.

The historical development of the Israeli Remembrance Day ceremony indicates a earlier willingness of the state to circumvent the constricts of religion. Since the Western Wall became the venue, the ceremony rigidified and the role of women became prescribed silence. The exclusion and silencing of women remains virtually unnoticed. Using a combination of theoretical models, feminist criticism, and historical research, my paper analyzes women's participation in the Remembrance Day ceremonies and concludes that as long as the Western Wall remains the site of these ceremonies, women will not be welcome as full participants.

Joseph B. Perry III. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Celebrating National Community: The Myth of the German "War Christmas" of 1914.

On Christmas Eve, 1914, Father Jakob Eber, a military priest, visited the German front line at Verdun, offering Christmas mass and joining officers and enlisted men in the first Christmas of World War I. This paper uses Father Eber's diary to reconstruct his holiday experience in the context of a nation-wide network of celebration and introduces popular post-war myths engendered by the "war Christmas." The paper underscores the importance of celebration, memory, and myth for shaping contests over the meaning of German national identity. Slides from contemporary publications illustrate the visual aspects of German Christmas in 1914.

Jose A. Quiles. (Kean University). Some Psycho-Social Observations of Rites and Ceremonials in the End of the Coffee Harvest Fiesta of Maricao, Puerto Rico.

The rites and ceremonials celebrated during the "End of the Coffee Harvest Fiesta," (known in Spanish as "El Acabe," meaning "The Ending"), are discussed as representing unique psycho-social aspects and as expressive forms of popular culture which serve to promote community involvement and identity. Some values and behaviors which are considered indigenous and commemorative of the traditions of the coffee region are specifically highlighted during this presentation. The psycho-social framework for focusing on rites and ceremonials seems to be a valuable research approach for studying existing and emerging popular cultural forms.

Lisa Redfield Peattie. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Politics as Dramatic Performance.

To look at social movements and the activities of their organizers is to recognize the theatrical element in politics and government, as well as to understand protest demonstrations as serious attempts to reconstruct the world through drama. This sort of performance must confront enormous difficulties, among them: the legitimizing staging of the established institutions; the unpredictability of both setting and participants; and the need to engage "the media" and at the same time make it possible for participants to feel authentic.

Michael Robinson. (Bowling Green State University). TV Guide and Halloween: A Qualitative Analysis, 1977-1997.

TV Guide's Halloween Preview issue marks an intersection between calendar time and prime-time. This paper looks both at how Halloween programming has played out historically and how TV Guide has framed the cultural meaning of the holiday. Issues for the week before and the week containing October 31 were analyzed for each year from 1977-1997. There are four types of articles: discussions of the holiday and associated programming, celebrity interviews, short stories, and preview material. The increasing frequency of mentions in this popular periodical suggest the growing acceptance and importance of Halloween in the pantheon of holidays.

Erin Roth. (Western Kentucky University). "If you were there, you'd never seen it": Writing Fiction and the Ethnographer's Attempt to Uncover the Unseen in a Religious Healing Ritual.

The displaced postmodern ethnographer understands the impossibility of uncovering ultimate truth. Conventional ethnographic methods have come into question, namely participant-observation which is limited to seeing only that which is outwardly expressed. Spiritual experience is intensely personal and inward. Using my father's supernatural visions as an illustration, I will address some of the issues postmodern ethnographers face. I will present a highly experimental fictional treatment of an actual healing event, and discuss the problems and solutions fiction-writing pose. Other theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues to be addressed are reflexivity, reciprocal ethnography, and representation.

Nancy Ann Rudd. (The Ohio State University). Introduction.

My introduction to the panel relates how appearance is used to define and structure group behavior within particular subcultures where rituals or public displays are a critical component of the culture. Each subculture will then address (12-15 min. per person) (1) the collective values, beliefs, or lifestyle are held by the group, (2) what is the social reality of the group and how do members use appearance to reflect this reality, and (3) what symbolism or codes are used in appearance in rituals or public displays.

Joseph Ruff. (Bowling Green State University). A Sound As Pure As The Person: Believable Performances of Sincerity In a Country Music Ritual.

Country music's image as an expressive form particularly bound to authenticity has recently been described as the product of institutional fabrication. In contrast, I argue that country's central aesthetic standard depends more on performances of sincerity. Focusing on holiday reunion performances by a local country "star" who serves as staff musician on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, this paper explores the manner in which critical evaluations of local country performances exist in dialogue with the institutional narrative of country authenticity. The Joe Edwards Christmas Show reenacts shared values equating musical sound with individual integrity.

J. Rhett Rushing. (Indiana University). Egg Salad and Turkey Soup: American Holiday Food Leftovers and Traditional Expression.

Perhaps as universal as holiday foodways are holiday food remains and their traditional treatments. This paper will focus on the varied ways Americans attempt to solve/anticipate the holiday food leftover crisis, and the variety of expressions in response. It is significant to note that normal aesthetics get shifted in these situations--tinted egg salad after Easter, turkey tetrazini and turkey soup after Thanksgiving and Christmas, ham salad after other holidays--and how families come to expect the leftovers equally with their initial holiday feasts.

Cristina Sanchez Carretero. (University of Pennsylvania). Performing and Displaying Rocky Balboa: Popular Uses of Popular Culture.

Many Philadelphians integrate the symbol of Rocky into their daily lives through performance and displays, while some tourists incorporate images of Rocky into their perception of Philadelphia. The scholarly literature that has analyzed the relationship between popular fictional characters and tourism has focused on how popular culture artifacts portray cities, tourists, or ethnic groups. However, little is written about how communities integrate popular culture symbols (or heroes) in the touristic dimension of cities. This paper concentrates on the performative uses of Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia, analyzing how the city is modeled by a mass media character.

R. Keith Sawyer. (Washington University). Riffing on the Text: The Improvisational Element in Performance.

This talk is based on my ethnographic studies of three improvisational genres: small group jazz, improvisational theater, and children's dramatic play. I will present an interactional semiotic model of improvisation, based on close analyses of transcribed dialogue. The model allows a comparison of performance genres, particularly the differences between relatively formalized or ritualized genres, and unscripted, improvisational performances like festival and celebration. I will discuss how all performances, including rituals, incorporate improvisational elements, and I will discuss the implications for the relationships between ritual text and performance.

Vickie Rutledge Shields. (Bowling Green State University). An Ethnography of Rodeo Queen Culture: Clandestine Feminism Expressed through Excessive Feminine Masquerade.

Within the patriarchal, traditional, and ritualistic culture of rodeo, women occupy contested and contradictory positions, as equestrian athletes and at the same time as decorative spectacles. Nowhere within rodeo culture are these seemingly contradictory practices more pronounced than within the sub-culture of "rodeo queening." Through an ethnographic analysis, this paper argues that rodeo queens participate in excessive feminine masquerade not easily defined by patriarchal codes. Rodeo women practice a clandestine feminism, rarely subverting the patriarchal structure of rodeo in overt ways, but finding personal empowerment and agency through the activity of "competing."

Amy Shuman. (The Ohio State University). Roundtable Discussion: The Invention of Heritage in Festival "Contact Zones ".

Folk festivals are often produced for an audience larger than the culture of the performers; designed explicitly to provide an occasion for cultural exchange, they occur in what Mary Louise Pratt describes as "contact zones," social spaces in which groups negotiate their differences and discover their shared interests. Contact zones, especially those of colonialism, often involve conditions of coercion, conflict, and inequality. Even the marketplace model of potentially mutual benefit operates in the context of a dominant culture's rules for who can exchange what with whom, and which commodities are assigned which values. Folk festivals are both exempt from and integrated into other sorts of marketplaces of exchange, and while they sometimes provide alternative means for groups to exchange ideas and learn about each other, they are never entirely separate from the cultural antagonisms they may be designed to escape.

Lynn Silverstein. (Ohio University). Images of the Olympic Festival: How People Perceive the Media's Portrayals of Male and Female Athletes.

What are the power issues surrounding the Olympics that deny men and women their lived experiences? How are these issues manifested in the Olympics through the themes of spatiality, temporality, corporeality, and relationality? To answer these questions, I conducted and interpreted conversations with three women and three men during the 1998 Winter Olympics. Issues included not just the power available to the athletes but also the relationships fans have with the Games and the power of the audience members to watch the Games on television.

Judith B. Sobre. (The University of Texas at San Antonio). Enter the Ladies. The Early Years of the Battle of Flowers Parade in San Antonio, Texas.

This paper traces the early evolution of the Battle of Flowers parade, the only parade in the United States organized and put on solely by women. It began as a slapdash, last-minute parade in 1891 with the excuse of a visit by President Harrison, which ended in a melee. During the 1890s it grew to be a large-scale patriotic parade, but always thematically and stylistically colored by the ladies who organized it. It will be contrasted to the Tournament of Roses, which began around the same time with the same inspiration, but which evolved very differently.

Thomas M. Spencer. (Northwest Missouri State University). Power on Parade: The Veiled Prophet Parade, Class Conflict, and Civic Instruction in St. Louis, 1877-1880.

When St. Louis' Veiled Prophet Celebration was founded in 1878, the founding members of the event envisioned it would be a multi-purpose celebration. This paper examines the ties between the origins of the celebration and the St. Louis General Strike of 1877. The celebration represented an effort by members of the St. Louis business class to reclaim the streets of St. Louis from the working-class and to substitute their own version of "street theatre" for that which workers had formerly provided. These celebrations provided workers with advice on morals and proper social order. The Veiled Prophet organization was also designed to advance the economic standing of the city, while its members advanced their own fortunes.

Hilary Standish. (Texas A&M University). The Texas Aggie Bonfire: Construction and Destruction as a Rite of Passage.

This presentation explores how participating in a university tradition creates and affirms identity by reinforcing group membership. The annual creation of Texas A&M University's bonfire, reportedly the largest in the country, can be read as a rite of passage. During the construction process student workers become initiated into Aggie culture: they not only learn safety precautions and building techniques, but learn to emulate senior class members' attitudes, attire, and bonfire-specific vocabulary. Many of these behaviors fly in the face of convention, creating a carnivalesque atmosphere which reaches its peak on the night of the bonfire's destruction.

Benjamin Stewart. (New York University). Mimetic Messengers.

The work of a bicycle messenger is, for the most part, solitary. When we consider this in light of the extreme conditions in which the messenger exists, it seems logical that such an individual would desire some form of community. Bicycle messenger races are the most coherent, large-scale expression of this desire. The interesting thing about these races is the extent to which they strive to recreate the stressful, unpredictable conditions of the work environment. Why this particular need to recreate? Is this not a strange bit of mimesis? My aim is to explore what this can tell us about the deeper structure of human desire.

Cory Thorne. (Bowling Green State University). "Any Mummers Allowed In?" Nativism, Nationalism, and Revitalization in Newfoundland Music.

Since the confederation with Canada (1949), there have been many changes in the culture of Newfoundland, through increasing urbanization and industrialization, as well as emigration to other parts of North America. These factors have resulted in a renewal of interest by Newfoundlanders in traditional folklore, as shown in songs such as Bud Davidge's "Any Mummers Allowed In?" Mummering, the Christmas practice of house visiting while in costume, has been adopted as a symbol of native identity and pride. This presentation will explore theories of revitalization, nativism, and nationalism, in reference to Davidge's song.

.Donna Truglio. (Cornell University). The Peculiar History of May First in the United States, 1870-1894: The Creation and Re-Formation of an American Holiday.

The cultural history of May First in nineteenth-century America, as it developed from a Spring celebration into both an urban "moving day" and the rallying point for labor's national 8-hour agitation, demonstrates several characteristics common to many American holidays. The peculiar creation and subsequent reformations of May First clearly shows both the transformation of purpose over time and across space, and the contestation of the use of public space, ceremonial time, and symbolic content which determines the political meanings of American holidays. As the political message of May First became increasingly unpopular so did this unofficial holiday.

Cliff Vaughn. (Bowling Green State University). Wielding the Freedom Song: The Exercise of Power in the Context of Demonstration.

Freedom songs, within the context of civil rights marches in Alabama in the 1960s, constituted a means by which civil rights activists exercised power. Using folklorist Beverly Stoeltje's model for examining power in the performance of what she terms "ritual genres," the presentation will demonstrate that activists asserted influence via their capacity to adopt, adapt, and ultimately wield freedom songs as a non-violent weapon in the. struggle for civil rights.

Carolyn Ware. (The University of Southern Mississippi). "Anything to Scare the Children": Cajun Women and Mardi Gras Masking.

Disguise is symbolically central to the rural Cajun Mardi Gras run. Masking allows Mardi Gras clowns to remain anonymous while temporarily assuming new identities. As women began running Mardi Gras in some communities, they also began making Mardi Gras masks and costumes that reflect their own aesthetics and reshape local tradition. This paper explores notions of traditions and its boundaries in relation to Mardi Gras disguises. It also addresses ways in which masking allows women to play with, and sometimes challenge, traditional cultural ideals of femininity.

Timothy K. Winkle. (Bowling Green State University). Jersey Devil Time: The Construction of Celebration in New Jersey's Pinelands.

This paper will examine the ways in which residents of southern New Jersey reacted to a sudden "appearance" of the legendary Jersey Devil, as strange tracks in the snow appeared all over the area in January of 1909. Local citizens created an atmosphere of spontaneous festivity that John Gutowski has termed "protofestival." Today, these festive energies have been channeled into various forms of organized festival and public ritual, most importantly as an integral part of Halloween in South Jersey. Regional newspapers have been the most active force in ensuring the continued association of the Jersey Devil to local Halloween celebration.

Juwen Zhang. (University of Pennsylvania). Toward a New Concept of Ethnic Culture.

An ethnic culture is not just a "hybridized" or "Creolized" one, but an emerging "third culture." To avoid ethnocentrically labeling the Other or the erasure of history, we need notice that this third culture is shifting its cultural core from its home culture and forming a new set of symbols and values. With an example of a Chinese Kung Fu class, I hold that any ethnic culture in the U.S. is in the process of a mutative transformation and in time will be a distinct culture with its own name.