Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, we present a cross-national comparison of parades. We compare and contrast two cases of collective action that share roots in an Anglo-European tradition of parading but unfold in political and social contexts that are an ocean apart. Our analysis compares loyalist parades in Ireland and temperance parades in antebellum America. This historical comparative analysis tracks two cases of parading that follow quite different trajectories to a similar point of contention. We show how in similar ways these different cases of parading turned to protest as elements of the ceremonial parade were twisted to confront their respective social and political contexts. We identify a particular concatenation of a form of action and a particularly configured context that makes parading contentious.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent efforts to suppress localized parading in New Orleans recalls nineteenth-century efforts in France to constrain local festivals as a means to centralize cultural power. In New Orleans, on as many as 75 days other than the official date of the Mardi Gras, parades staged by Mardi Gras Indians (members of fictive Indian nations) and second liners (members of Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs) have provided the city’s black working class with vehicles for collective resistance to this centralization and to the associated alienation from cultural production. Since the late 19th century, both forms of parading have involved two distinct traditions of body adornment, dance, and music: one builds off of Native American art and craft (masks, beadwork, feathers, drumming and chants), the other of the jazz funeral processions performed by neighborhood-based mutual aid societies. Moreover, both have provided opportunities for individual human agency: for the Mardi Gras Indians, who each year create a new elaborate costume of beads and feathers, this agency is embedded in the act of masking and parading particularly without a permit; for second-liners, whose parades always follow planned parade routes to enable a swelling crowd of “second liners,” agency is embedded in both costuming and in the individual expression of the second line dance. Pressure for economic recovery from Katrina has meant policy-makers sought to streamline cultural expression into state-sanctioned attractions tied directly to a tourist economy, yet local parading has rebuilt communities and meaning in local culture.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: This paper is intended as an aggressive critique of neoconservative ideology, specifically as it relates to the “war on terror” and its portrayal in the media. Primarily an examination of the relationship South Park has with post 9/11 politics (i.e. “Ladder to Heaven,” “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”), the main focus of the paper will be to demonstrate how political discourse as constructed by the Bush administration, as well as its mobilization in the media, can be decentered and denormalized through a humorous, disruptive approach to narrative. A partial rebuttal to Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives, it is also meant to demonstrate how dissonant popular culture can be aggressively conceived to operate in what are often considered to be conservative domains. It will also briefly discuss the movie Team America: World Police, one of the examples of “conservative” ideology Anderson celebrates in Parker and Stone’s work as an example of how a disruptive strategy can result in a text that is at once reactionary and progressive. Through a discussion of neoconservative and neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 9/11, drawing primarily on Judith Butler, Susan Willis, and Wendy Brown as well as Slajov Zizek and Stuart Hall, the paper concludes that dissonant visual culture assimilates both types of discourse in order to produce a critical, and perhaps anarchic, sensibility.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: On April 15, 2007, Sue Zhang, a prominent Chinese American and a leader of the Roundtable of Chinese-American Associations in Southern California, announced at a press conference that a Beijing Olympic-themed Rose Float would appear in the 2008 Pasadena Rose Parade. The float was jointly financed by a Pasadena-based U.S. company and ten prominent Chinese Americans, all having business ties in China. Many participants at the conference claimed that the float symbolized how Chinese Americans had overcome ideological differences for the first time to accomplish a common goal. However, the themed float caused a great controversy. Chinese dissidents, Falungong practitioners and human rights activists organized various protests to urge the Pasadena major and other officials to exclude the float from the Rose Parade. They called the proposed float “float of shame” and “propaganda float.” While there is still strong support among Pasadena city officials and Chinese Americans for the inclusion of the float, the activist groups have used the Internet, radio, magazine and other media forums to condemn the Chinese government and the Beijing Olympics.
While the Beijing Olympics have often been viewed as a great opportunity for China to project itself as a modern harmonious society, this controversy indicates that the Chinese government and the supporters of China face great challenges when using the Olympics as a public diplomacy opportunity due to human rights violations, Falungong, Tibet and Taiwan issues, and other social problems. Domestic problems can be magnified and obtain new meanings at international occasions. The paper looks at the controversy and its implications in the larger context of China’s peaceful rise and its aggressive efforts in promoting its international images in the U.S. and globally. It also examines the limitations and potentials for the Chinese government to use its economic development and overseas Chinese to project its soft power, largely due to the stratification of Chinese society, fragmentation of overseas Chinese, China’s stagnant political reforms and the perception of Chinese development. I will analyze media reports and conduct interviews with the float organizers, the Pasadena and Chinese officials, and human rights activists.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Exploring local African American cultural production in its social and political context "Responding to the Rhetoric of Blight: The Bud Billiken Parade and Black Chicago 1940-1965" argues that the Billiken parade, an iconic part of Chicago's African American cultural history from the depression to the present day, can be used as a lens for understanding African American political development, particularly after World War II. Broadly, this research emphasizes the importance of understanding African American cultural production as part of a set of discourses about local political economy, local social concerns, and local activist organizing. The Billiken Parade not only showcased African American community organizations, it sent a powerful message to Black Chicago to defy the notion that south side neighborhoods were "blighted" and in need of "urban renewal.” Indeed, the rhetoric of blight was a dangerously popular and public discourse in post war Chicago that would later provide the justification for the city's devastating Second Ghetto public housing projects. African American responses to urban renewal in Chicago have been woefully understudied and generally there is little historical understanding of the importance that African American cultural discourses played in contesting the rhetoric blight. Specifically, the changing content of the parade, not only outlined the changing boundaries of the south side as migrants increasingly moved in, but reflected African Americans increasingly self-conscious reliance on African American community organizations to service the community as municipal neglect left African American neighborhoods behind advancements in healthcare and living standards compared to other parts of the city. Finally, because the parade was annually seen by nearly half a million African Americans by the mid forties it has to be understood as an incredibly effective means to transmit political ideology to every day African Americans who may never have picked up a copy of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.