Celebration Of Festivals Research Articles

Creating and Developing a Service Network of Stage Costume Business in Isan Community

Problem statement: A lot of stage costume businesses in Isan community (northeast community of Thailand) cannot expand their business into larger scales because the owners mange everything by themselves so it cause a lot of difficulties such as a lack of low cost stage costume sources. Approach: This research aimed to examine 3 points. First, to examine the background of stage costume business in Isan community in the past. Second, to examine the situation and difficulties of stage costume business in Isan community at present. And third, to examine the creation and development of a network of stage costume business in Isan Community. The data were collected by a literature survey, an observation and an interview in the field. The research areas were the districts of Maha Sarakham, Roi Et and Yasothon Province. A total of 15 shops were selected from 5 shops of each province and each shop had carried forward more than 5 years. The results were presented according to research purposes by means of a descriptive analysis. Results: The results revealed that the background of stage costume business of Isan community in the past began with people made costume themselves for dressing during a festival or traditional celebration. Since 1982 educational institutes have arranged learning activities on music and dramatic arts. Each of them has revived ancient tradition and art, performed both Thai and folk dramatic art. Thus stage costume business have started widely for serving the business have started widely for serving the public since then. The main situation and difficulty of stage costume business in Isan Community was the owners managed everything by themselves that caused a loss of stage costume, a lack of assistance, a lack of low cost costume sources, a competition in business and loan raising and a difficult in business expansion. The creation and development of a service network of stage costume business in Isan community was a step-by-step network. It started from the cooperation in business goal and difficulties solution of a small group of entrepreneurs. Since then, they have shared and solved the problems together and developed their network from a local scale into a country scale in order to add a profit from business operation. Conclusion/Recommendations: According to the research results, the main difficulty of stage costume business in Isan society was the entrepreneurs could not expand their business into larger scales while the requirement of customers was increasing. The researcher would like to suggest that the research concerning the ways to establish and develop a service network of stage costume business is necessary. And the entrepreneurs should establish their business network in order to share all resources together and expand their business into larger scales base on appropriate culture that enhance the sustained occupations and earnings of community.

`The Beacon of Hope for the Black Race'

This article presents an ethnographic analysis of the state-sponsored Pan-African Historical Festival (PANAFEST) and Emancipation Day celebrations that commemorate Ghana's history of Pan-African and slavery while promoting `heritage tourism'. I argue that with calls for African emancipation and Pan-African cooperation, these celebrations create the space for the state's concrete production of social meanings around history, politics, and, especially, race. This Ghanaian state `race-craft', specifically, is revealed through the deployment of a particular narrative of slavery that allows for not only the explicit claim to racial affiliation with diaspora Black communities, but it also enables the recalling of Ghana's own racialized heritage for the production of new national subjectivities. It is also significant that, along with the concomitant growth of the global heritage tourism industry, these PANAFEST/Emancipation Day celebrations are occurring within the context of a shift to a neoliberal economic agenda. As the Ghanaian state continues to host and sponsor these international Pan-Africanist events, it draws on its position in the global economy to craft local and transnational racial subjectivity.

Timor Mortis: The Fear of Death in Augustine’s Sermons on the Martyrs

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries Augustine of Hippo preached a number of sermons at the annual celebrations of martyr festivals. These festivals commemorated the martyr’s ‘birthday’: the day of the martyr’s death on earth and entrance into the eternal life of heaven. They were popular occasions, drawing in larger and more diverse crowds than ordinary services, and attracting a certain air of festivity and merriment in North Africa. Martyr festivals provided the ideal location for the discussion of the afterlife: eschatological hopes had long given meaning to martyrdom, exposing the order permeating chaos, pointing towards beauty amid human suffering, and revealing death as the gateway to true life.

Racializing the Audience: Immigrant Perceptions of Mainstream Canadian English-Language TV News

This paper offers an analysis of a pilot project that examines the perceptions of English-language TV news among two racialized groups: self-identified Iranian-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians. This research indicates that, according to participants, mainstream Canadian English-language TV news does not necessarily offer racialized immigrant audiences a space through which to see themselves reflected accurately as part of Canada’s rich social life beyond the celebration of ethnic events and festivals. Participants explained that they appreciated Canadian English-language television news, with important caveats. They would like to see the Canadian English-language television news media create spaces in which they could see their own ethnic, racial, cultural, and immigrant identities reflected within the backdrop of the Canadian multicultural state.

Una etnografía del 23º Lusata en Caprivi (Namibia). Observaciones sobre imágenes y discurso

At a time of political cohesion, the festive celebrations have another crucial function: that of recreating cyclically the collective memory (frequently at the service of the political sphere), enriching the cultural heritage of the society in question. These are also nutrients needed in the nourishing of a “identity cement” capable of generating centripetal force enough to unite the rich plurality of identities often not very cooperative in the heart of the State itself (especially in the multi-ethnic and multi-national contexts of post-colonial Africa).

Paschal Politics: Deploying the Temple's Destruction against Fourth-Century Judaizers

AbstractThe fourth-century Syriac writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem, and Greek homilies by the Syrian John Chrysostom, warn Christian congregants against joining Jewish festival celebrations such as Passover. In light of the respected age of Judaism's scriptures and traditions, not all of these authors' church attendees were easily convinced by supersessionist claims about Judaism's invalidity. These authors surpass earlier Christian claims that the Temple's destruction revealed God's rejection of the Jews, by arguing that Jewish scripture requires ritual sacrifices that were confined to the Jerusalem Temple. us without the Temple sacrifices, fourth-century Jewish festivals, these authors claimed, defied God's biblical commands, a declaration with sharp implications for Judaizing Christians. Demonstrating the nuances of this argument, which crossed eastern linguistic and political boundaries, contributes to complex discussions regarding these texts' audiences, highlights distinctive elements that their contexts shared, and reveals an unrecognized role that the Temple's destruction played in fourth-century anti-Judaizing discourse.

Reinterpreting the 1920s

On a dark December afternoon in 2001, I happened on a festive celebration in an elegant store in Stockholm, Sweden. In the shoe department, young saleswomen dressed as flappers danced to American Charleston tunes and offered customers flutes of champagne. I should not have been surprised by this international recognition of the 1920s icon of American womanhood. Five years before, in Tokyo, I had seen a poster commemorating the one-hundred year anniversary of that city's subway. It featured a very modern young Japanese couple, with the woman's clothing clearly echoing the flapper style. As such a recognizable symbol of the 1920s, the flapper can be a useful device in introducing students to the decade. Along with Prohibition and speakeasies, gangsters and Gatsby-like parties, the flapper embodies the stereotypical notion of the “roaring twenties.” By examining stereotypes, teachers can encourage students to explore first, why these images are so well known, and second, how popular notions of the 1920s as an “era of wonderful nonsense” obscure the complexity of an era and the diversity of the American people whose experience of the decade differed widely.

In Search of Leisure: Women's Festivities in Late Imperial Beijing

For most residents of late-Imperial Beijing, “Guojie” (celebration of festivals) and “Guangmiao” (strolling around temple fairs) were two great pleasures. As the capital, Beijing attracted people from across the country who brought about a significant fusion of cultures. National and local festivals were held throughout the year. Eighteenth-century scholar Pan Rongbi counted 22 annual festivals in Beijing, each with a specific purpose: official ceremonies conducted by the emperor; the worship of ancestors and gods; the selling of seasonal food; the performance of rituals especially for men, women, or children; and festivals that brought families and friends together for touring temples and markets, which included displays of lanterns and fireworks, games, and feasts. Other scholars appreciated the uniqueness and sophistication of the holiday celebrations in the city that they produced book-length accounts of those events.

The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism. Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 by Daniel L. Unowsky

AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I4, 20 6 357 crushed by theAustrians. The final three chapters draw attention to the growing popularity of the Eastern Alps, and also to the effects of the revolution on disillusioned visitors in the second half of the century,who sensed the instability of theMonarchy and the vulnerability ofAustria. While the thematic methodology on the whole works well, the rationale for ordering the extracts within chapters is not always chronological. More direct textual engagement in the chapter introductions would have enabled the editors to explore the significance of the passages more thoroughly. To cover such a vast date span is ambitious, and one would expect there to be much that is leftout, but an edition on this scale needs a secure sense of the chronology of events, and the indications of what is to come in the second volume are vague. With regard to the latter, the editors suggest, curiously, that 'our visual age of photo tourism leaves no written records' (pp. 12-13). The inclusion of page numbers of the original publications of the primary sources would have been useful, and more care could have been taken with the copy editing. Nevertheless, this text will have a general appeal to those working on travelwriting and will, hopefully, inspire others to continue to investigate further. Edinburgh University Eleoma Joshua The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism. Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848 7916. By Daniel L. Unowsky. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. 2005. xiii + 263 pp. $29.95. ISBN ^-bbblb^-A00-^ In 1898, in response to the procession of children organized by the Christian Socials in Vienna to celebrate Emperor Franz Joseph's jubilee, the Arbeiter Zeitung asked a pertinent question: 'What is patriotism? Before the procession one believed that it was a feeling of belonging to the native soil, to the hereditary People' (p. 158). Afterwards, given the cynical exploitation of the event by Lueger's party, thiswas apparently no longer true. Rather, 'patriotism' had been transformed into the ability tomarch in time before themonarch. In his most interesting and informative book, Daniel Unowsky reports this questioning of themeaning of patriotism, but he himself does not engage with it.For all the remarkable research and high-level scholarship contained in this book on 'patriotism', there isvery littlediscussion ofwhat that very complicated term actually means. Unowsky is enlightening about the politics of the dynastic propaganda effort undertaken throughout Franz Joseph's reign to bolster loyalty to themonarch. Unowsky's basic thesis is thatHabsburg power can only be fully understood if one recognizes the authority amassed by the imperial house's investment in the instruments of display, whether in the form of religious ritual, court display, tours of the provinces, or in festive celebrations. His rather predictable conclusion is that in these terms Franz Joseph was not the tragic failure many allege but actually did rather well in instilling loyalty amongst his subjects to himself, 'and through him the state he led' (p. 182). Unowsky articulates his exposition of this propaganda effort in three parts: there is an initial section outlining the components of Habsburg 'charisma'; then we are taken out to the provinces, 358 Reviews to Galicia; the third part is an extensive analysis of the 1898 jubilee, how the imperial authorities attempted to elaborate what Unowsky calls 'the cult of the emperor' to rally the quarrelling nationalities around themonarch, and how thiswas hijacked by the Christian Socials inVienna to propagate an exclusory, anti-Semitic and ideologically narrow definition of 'patriotism'. The book ends with a short conclusion, inwhich Unowsky takes a swipe at those 'blinded' by adverse press coverage into thinking that the subsequent 1908 jubilee was not a success. For Unowsky, with a few problems admittedly, itwas a success, as was the Habsburgs' propaganda effort generally. Indeed, the book ends as an encomium to the 'charisma' of Franz Joseph and his success inmaintaining his authority ? and that of the state he led. As one of those 'blinded', I would have to differ with Unowsky on that last point. The book is an extremely well-informed study of an often fascinating subject. The account of the court discussions around the 1898 theatrical effort to articulate Habsburg identity...

The Range – and Purposes – of Australian Public Festivals That are Functioning at Present

The 'festival', this customary and very Australian institution, has always embraced a multiplicity of rituals, forms and activities; for it is public in its presentation, participatory in its nature, an embodiment of the community, and also a carrier of its traditional/long accepted values and beliefs, notably those of defiance and of the scurrilous and mocking. Recent classification would seem to indicate that social and class bases enable the (larger) festivals to be put in several categories. Alex Barlow opted to categorize these festivals into eight, seemingly progressively developing, clusters: seasonal, harvest, food, sport, historical, cultural, religious, ethnic/folk. Australia today enjoys a vast variety of festive celebrations, civic, playful, religious, popular, and traditional. The catalysts/determinants to the regular performances and their attractiveness are: (present) power; (residual) class; the distinctive/seeming enclave; or the perceived/energetically claimed/promoted 'regional' style. The author also outlines some theoretical perspectives on the late modern/post-modern public celebration of festivals on the basis of two major scholars in the U.S. - William M. Johnston and Jack Kugelmas. The Australian/post-modern festival complex/area of associations - and one somehow close to the area of meaningful and accessible 'heritage' - is one evolving in its deeper significance, and acting as a bowl mirror to tell us much about the actual local/national past and its possible future. Yet it continues to defiantly celebrate life, and so it remains, as it always has been, the most important/ uncertain/enigmatic presentation of a culture's /any culture's values, meaning, more spontaneous behaviour and place on history's spectrum.

Ascendant Peace in the Four Seas: Tributary Drama and the Macartney Mission of 1793

Apart from entertainment, the Qing court used drama extensively for ritual and political purposes. From Qianlong on, drama became an indispensable part of palace ritual. Among the five imperial rites, jili (auspicious rites), jiali (felicitous rites), junli (martial rites), binli (protocol rites), and xiongli (inauspicious rites), only the last, which dealt with funerals and disasters, did not involve the performance of ritual drama. Auspicious rites were state sacrifices offered in the suburban altars and the ancestral temple, in which emperors offered sacrifices to Heaven, Earth, ancestors and the pantheon of deities. Felicitous rites included celebrations of festivals, birthdays, marriages, and the confirmation of imperial titles. Martial rites included dramas celebrating military victories or hunting excursions, and protocol rites referred to the special dramas performed in the presence of foreign visitors. In the latter case, the audience was often entertained with colorful and lavish performances on the theme of foreign delegations paying tribute to the might of the Chinese emperor. This paper concentrates on tributary drama, especially the drama commissioned and performed on the occasion of Lord Macartney’s mission to the Qianlong emperor in 1793, the first diplomatic contact between Great Britain and China. Historians continue to argue about the details and significance of

Afrocentricity, the Adae Festival of the Akan, African American Festivals, and Intergenerational Communication

African American communities celebrate different kinds of festivals each year, but little has been published on this subject. This article is intended to fill part of the vacuum, demonstrating the importance and functions of African festivals and their relationship with contemporary African American festivals. African festivals are a tool of community gathering and unity and place us at the center of our culture and social environment. They are also a medium of cultural education and intergenerational communication and play an important role in the preservation of our cultural heritage, transmitting knowledge and our experiences as a people to future generations. The celebration of festivals in the African American communities must not be seen merely as an annual congregation of street and food vendors, marching bands, and musicians but also as a tool of cultural reconstruction and transmission of knowledge to the younger generation.

Chinese Entertainment, Ethnicity, and Pleasure

ABSTRACT Early forms of entertainment in the Chinese immigrant society of Singapore took the form of festivals and festivities that invariably occurred on the streets. Celebration of festivals served religious and ethnic as well as moral functions, when values were reproduced and reinforced. People of the same kind gathered together to reproduce their ethnicity. Such festive events were as recreational as they were community-building and identity-bestowing. The character of leisure changed sharply when the entertainment went indoors, into amusement parks, cinemas, theaters, and dance and music halls. Leisure thus became less communal, more individualistic, more voluntary. Entertainment was becoming consumption, or consumption was displacing entertainment. One witnessed a profound moment of social transformation, because leisure had taken on a voluntary, individualistic character. The individual would labor to pay for his leisure and pleasure; pleasure was commodified—a sort of recreational consumption or consumptive recreation. At this moment of history, he reduced himself to a nonparticipant relationship with his objects of desire, maintaining a detached and alienated relationship with all, just like in the realm of work. The consumption of entertainment as offered later on the air, through radio and television, was made possible by the mediation of machines. Machines now came between the entertainer and the entertained, and created strangeness and anonymity. Increasingly, one listened to the radio, watched television, enjoyed a movie, all on one's own. A movie-goer faced the silver screen, alone, himself wrapped up in darkness. The completion of privatization of entertainment and leisure meant the ascendancy of the individual and the demise of community and tradition.

Ivan the Terrible by Joan Neuberger (review)

272 Reviews A short review is no place to enumerate a collection like this?suffice it to say that there are no 'duds' in this volume, and while readers may spot the omission of their favourite topic (music, magic, the celebration of seasonal festivals, perhaps), there is a diversity that both satisfies and challenges. My own complaint is that the majority of papers focus on the seventeenth century and later?Michael Flier's examination of the Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500, to a lesser extent Isolde Thyret's article on women and Orthodoxy in Muscovite Russia and Daniel Row? land's study of the political language of Orthodoxy expressed by sixteenth-century murals, comprise the few forays into medieval territory.But (given the subtitle ofthe volume) this is an unreasonable gripe, since the firstTsar of Russia (Ivan IV) was not thus crowned until 1547. The collection is rounded offwith a 'view from the West'?a response by Thomas N. Tentler, a historian of medieval and early modern Christianity in Western Eu? rope. This is a practice which might well be promoted?the debates initiated in the 1950s (and continuing today) about 'popular belief and 'Christianization' in Western European culture have not informed the work of Russianists to the extent that they should have. In this volume, Vera Shezov's thought-provoking article in particular is evidence of how fruitfulthat cross-fertilizationcan be. Prompted by the controversy over 'popular faith' versus 'the church', Shezov argues for a concept of 'church' as 'sacred community' rather than a fixed, hierarchical edifice ministering to a populace outside its walls?a use traditional in theological discourse but novel in academe. Attractively illustrated, supplied with a chronology, a map (which could be improved ), proper footnotes, and a decent index, the volume is as impressive in its presentation as in its content. The annotated bibliography includes only Englishlanguage sources for the study of Orthodoxy, and naturally there are omissions, but it offers a useful chronological summary of significant publications none the less. Finally, it is gratifyingto note that while the contributors are generally 'big names', one of the co-editors is a doctoral student?another practice that might be promoted more widely. In short, this book offers a model that might profitably be replicated by other collections arising from workshops and seminars. Would that all were such good value formoney. University of Sussex, Brighton Stella Rock Ivan the Terrible. By Joan Neuberger. (KINOfiles Film Companion 9) London and New York: Tauris. 2003. x+145 pp. ?x2.99. ISBN 1-86064-560-7. This short study of Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible is written by Joan Neuberger of the University of Texas at Austin, the author of a monograph on hooliganism in early twentieth-century St Petersburg. The book's structure is somewhat strange. A brief introduction and chapter on the film's production history are fol? lowed by a long chapter entitled Analysis', which comprises about three-quarters of the total length of the volume. Fortunately, this chapter is subdivided into sections devoted to themes such as 'Politics and History', 'Autobiography and Psychology', and 'Aesthetics and Visual Strategies'. Eisenstein was commissioned to make a film about the sixteenth-century tsar in January 1941, at a time when films,plays, and novels about 'great' historical figures fromthe Russian past were being utilized to develop a sense ofpatriotism in the Soviet people, in a dangerous international situation which was to culminate in the German invasion of June 1941. Eisenstein had earlier contributed to the patriotism campaign with his anti-German Alexander Nevskii (1938), which won a Stalin Prize before be? ing withdrawn from circulation on the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939. Ivan MLRy ioo.i, 2005 273 the Terrible was also to sufferfrom the vicissitudes of Soviet political life. Part 1 was awarded a Stalin Prize; but in 1946 Part 11was officiallycriticized, and it was released only in 1958, ten years afterthe director's death. Neuberger is not, however, primarily interested in the cultural politics of the making and reception of Eisenstein's film. She argues that the director wanted 'to offera critique of violent despotism in general' (p. 29) as well...

Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars by Valerie A. Kivelson , Robert H. Greene (review)

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 271 with the hybrid character ofhis works, which transcend all genre conventions. The ensuing chapters on The Emigrants, The Rings ofSa turn, Vertigo,and Austerlitz offerex? cellent introductions to Sebald's prose works: each chapter manages to engage with the thematic concerns of each text without losing sight of overriding thematic and stylis? tic concerns. Each chapter finishes with a brief summary ofthe reception ofthe prose works in the English-speaking countries and, to a lesser extent, in Germany. McCulloh shows convincingly why Sebald's works should not be conflated with Holocaust literature, a trend in much ofthe British and American reception. With the exception of two minor factual lapses (the German publication date of Die Ausgewanderten was not 1993 but 1992, and the reference to Zweig in the Bereyter story is not to Arnold Zweig, as McCulloh has it,but to Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in 1942), the book is virtually error-freeand carefully produced. Its selective bibliography provides a commentary which should prove especially useful to undergraduate students of Se? bald. The book offersa stimulating and well-written introduction to Sebald's writings. University College Dublin Anne Fuchs Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars. Ed. by Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003. xii + 291 pp. ?36.5o(pbk?i6.5o). ISBN0-271-02349-x(pbk0-271-02350-3). This is a truly wonderful book, which should prove a welcome addition to the bookshelves of any teacher or student of Russian culture. There are very few good sur? veys of Russian Orthodoxy available in English, and most students are still relying on Fedotov's inspirational but occasionally misleading Russian Religious Mind (first published in 1946) for insight into what he termed 'the subjective side of religion' (George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York, Evanston, IL, and London: Harper Torch Books, 1960), p. ix)?piety and culture rather than organized structures and dogma. As the editors rightly observe in a satisfyingly comprehensive introduction, re? ligion has often been marginalized in textbooks and general histories of Russia, or presented in 'formulaic stereotypes' representing Russian Orthodoxy as a rigid hier? archy of obscurantist and ritual-obsessed clergy, responsible for isolating Russians from the West. Contributors to this volume challenge these stereotypes and the 'dualistic models' of Russian culture (p. 15) that have predominated in studies of Russian faithforover a century. Reflecting the current academic preference forstudies of 'lived Orthodoxy' ratherthan institutional histories, this collection aims to provide a general survey of 'the role of religion in the lives of Russians and non-Russians, Orthodox believers and sectarians, clerics and laity, elites and commoners, men and women' (p. 5), offeringsome excellent insights into the way that Russians experienced?and shaped?Orthodoxy under the Tsars. Contributors?weighty US scholars all?explore subjects as diverse as lay female spirituality, the transmission of ideas by murals, and the baptism of pagan communi? ties on the fringes of empire. Difficult concepts are challenged ('binary oppositions', 'double-belief, 'conversion', 'popular culture'), and new approaches to old problems are demonstrated. Eve Levin's wittyand fascinating exploration of the transformation of unidentified corpse into saint demonstrates the changing concerns of Orthodox hierarchs in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; William Wagner's close study of a Nizhegorod convent from 1807 to 1935 reveals the extraordinary resourcefulness and adaptability ofthe nuns to economic, social, and political change; Daniel Kaiser's study of marriage and birth patterns in early modern Russia seeks to dispel the myth that Orthodoxy was of little importance to a fundamentally superstitious populace. 272 Reviews A short review is no place to enumerate a collection like this?suffice it to say that there are no 'duds' in this volume, and while readers may spot the omission of their favourite topic (music, magic, the celebration of seasonal festivals, perhaps), there is a diversity that both satisfies and challenges. My own complaint is that the majority of papers focus on the seventeenth century and later?Michael Flier's examination of the Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500, to a lesser extent Isolde Thyret's...

Verdi and Sacred Revivalism in Post Unification Italy

This essay sets the late sacred works of Giuseppe Verdi in the context of the late-nineteenth-century fascination for the revival, performance, and festive celebration of historical cultural figures and artworks. From the 1870s onward, certain artistic trends became prevalent in post-unification Italy: anxiety to instill a sense of nation into art and everyday life, nostalgia for a vanished golden age of Italian artistic history, and an ever more energetic revival of historical artistic forms and styles. These currents were stimulated by a nationalistic Catholic revivalism that, I argue, was the strongest influence on Verdi's late career. I outline Verdi's reception in and his personal association with the Catholic revivalist movement, developing a view of Verdi's late life and works as articulating shifting trends in the Church and conservatory. As well as revealing the impact of revivalist aesthetics on the style of works such as Verdi's Pater noster, this inquiry suggests that revivalism contributed to a "canonization" of his image that intertwined civic and religious history.

Ethnic Outsider as the Ultimate Insider: The Paradox of Verghese's "My Own Country"

In 1994, in the midst of the United States' painful and searching engagement with AIDS, Abraham Verghese's first memoir, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS, was published. Note that the subtitle of Verghese's memoir calls attention to his occupation but not to his race or ethnicity. In addition, the presentation of material within the memoir is primarily focused on Verghese as doctor and less on Verghese as immigrant from Ethiopia/India, although that strand of narrative is by no means absent. Yet, as this essay argues, Verghese manipulates central opposition of ethno-racial discourse, versus outsider, to complicate our understanding of the relationships between ethno-racial identification on the one hand and power and access on the other. (1) In particular, the essay prompts us to consider the dimensions of social class and religion and their impact on how individuals become ethnicized, marked as by the dominant group (in this case, Christian whites). (2) In his memoir, Verghese moves deftly between portrayals of himself as outsider and insider. This shifting position--in relation both to the other Indian American doctors in the region and to the Southern white community within which he lives--gives him unique access to his patients' deepest confidences. He and the AIDS-afflicted men who become his patients share the condition of being both outsiders and insiders. Upon the publication of My Own Country, Verghese became near celebrity, both in medical and literary circles, but, curiously, he remained for several years virtual unknown among scholars and students of multi-ethnic literature. Verghese, currently working in San Antonio, Texas, is physician born in Ethiopia to parents who emigrated from India to this African nation as teachers. Verghese received his medical training in Ethiopia, India, and the United States. In this book, he writes about his experiences in the small town of Johnson City, Tennessee, where he found himself quite inadvertently, in the late 1980s, becoming the local AIDS expert. The situation contains all the elements that ought to make for rich discussion of cross-ethnic and cross-racial encounters: brown-skinned doctor in rural Tennessee treating white men dying of AIDS. Yet, even today, almost ten years after the publication of this fine memoir, only small handful of scholars and educators treat this text for its implications for American ethnic literature, despite the far-reaching impact of the book. (3) True, My Own Country does not offer an obvious parade of the experiences of particular ethnic community: there is minimal portrayal of Indian American cultural practices such as food, marriage, religious worship, celebration of festivals, and language use: Verghese does not play informant or cultural guide. His is not the voice of the minority ethnic insider presenting his fellow-ethnics to the dominant majority group (except in rather cursory way). However, he does not reject his ethnicity as an Indian American; he recounts with fondness his attending Indian American social gatherings. The complexity of his self-positioning--as insider in certain contexts, as outsider in others makes his narrative hard to categorize. To call it an account of an Indian American doctor would be to overemphasize ethnicity: yet to say that it is primarily an account of the experiences of doctor who happens to be Indian American is also not entirely accurate. Ethnicity may be incidental but it is not insignificant to the narrative. The excerpt below underscores the complex interplay between insider and outsider perspectives, in this instance as they pertain to the community of Indian American doctors. Notice Verghese's use of the pronoun they; here, he carefully differentiates himself from the doctors even as he acknowledges that they provided him and his wife with a familiar and affectionate culture (23): The foreign doctors--with some glaring exceptions--were well received. …

St. Petersburg 2003

ST. PETERSBURG FESTIVAL OF FESTIVALS For much too long, the St. Petersburg Festival of Festivals has lingered in the shadows of the all-mighty Moscow International Film Festival. This year, however, everything has changed for the better. Since 2003 marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, the year has been one long celebration of events and festivals on the Neva. According to some reports, the 11th St. Petersburg Festival of Festivals (23-29 June) under director Alexander Mamontov received as much government funding as did the Moscow International Film Festival (21-30 June) under president Nikita Mikhalkov. Still, it's hard to figure out just why, in this year of national celebration, the calendar dates of the two film festivals should unfortunately overlap each other. But this is Russia. The same arm-wrestling for calendar position forced the Sochi International and Open Russian Film Festivals (1-14 June)...

New Orleans in Montréal : The Cradle of Jazz in the City of Festivals

This paper explores representations of New Orleans and Louisiana music at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal between 1999 and 2001. It questions how Louisiana and Québec have used these representations to construct cultural affinities between their francophone histories, drawing specifically on the tourist place-images of Montréal and New Orleans as cities of festive celebration. First, I frame narratives of New Orleans as the mythic "birthplace of jazz" and those of Montréal as a "city of festivals" to demonstrate how the cultural practice of jazz joins images of the sinful and the festive in each city’s urban imaginary. Second, I examine how the origins of jazz in New Orleans merge with discourses of cultural authenticity and tradition in greater Louisiana, and how such representations are seen to be truthfully celebrated in Montréal as a creative, French city with an open nightlife. I conclude with the argument that the joint marketing of each city’s festive place-image at the jazz festival has occurred within a logic of tourism that has sought to construct a Francophone diaspora in North America, despite the negligible cultural, economic, and even historical contact between the regions.

Making public pasts: the contested terrain of Montreal's public memories, 1891-1930

Gordon shows that while individual memory is crucial to establishing and maintaining identity, public memory is contested terrain - official customs and traditions, monuments, historic sites, and the celebration of anniversaries and festivals serve to order individual and collective perceptions of the past. Public memory is therefore the product of competitions and ideas about the past that are fashioned in a public sphere and speak primarily about structures of power. It conscripts historical events in a bid to guide shared memories into a coherent narrative that helps individuals negotiate their place in broader collective identities. The contest over public memories involves an exclusiveness that packages others according to the ideological preferences of the dominant cultures. Gordon shows that in Montreal ethnic, class, and gender voices strove to stake their own claims to legitimacy. Rather than acknowledging a single past, Montreal's many publics made and celebrated many public memories.