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This beautifully illustrated volume featuring leading writers and experts on carnival, presents a body of work that takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the various aspects of carnival, its traditions, history, music and politics

Contributions by Darrell Gerohn Baksh, Jan de Cosmo, Frances Henry, Jeff Henry, Adanna Kai Jones, Samantha Noel, Dwaine Plaza, Philip W. Scher, and Asha St. Bernard Women are performing an ever-growing role in Caribbean Carnival. Through a feminist perspective, this volume examines the presence of women in contemporary Carnival by demonstrating not only their strength in numbers, but also the ways in which women participate in the event. While decried by traditionalists, the bikinis, beads, and feathers of “pretty mas’” convey both a newly found empowerment as a gendered resistance to oppression from men. Although research on Carnivals is substantial, especially in the Americas, the subject of women in Carnival as a topic of inquiry remains fairly new. These essays address anthropological and historical facets of women and their practices in the Trinidad Carnival, including an analysis of how women’s costuming and performance have changed over time. The modern costumes, which are well within the financial means of most mas’ players, demonstrate the new power of women who can now afford these outfits. In discussing the commodification and erotization of Carnival, the book emphasizes the unveiling of the female body and the hip-rolling sexual movements called winin or it. Through display of their bodies, contemporary women in Carnival express a form of female resistance. Intent on enjoying and expressing themselves, they seem invigorated by their place in the economy, as well as their sexuality, defying the moral controls imposed on them. Through an array of methods in qualitative research, including interviews, participant observation, and ethnography, this volume explains the new power of women in the evolution of Carnival mas’ in Trinidad amid the wider Caribbean diaspora.

This book shows how Carnival under British colonial rule became a locus of resistance as well as an exercise and affirmation of power. Carnival is both a space of theatricality and a site of politics, where the playful, participatory aspects are appropriated by countervailing forces seeking to influence, control, channel or redirect power. Focusing specifically on the Maltese islands, a tiny European archipelago situated at the heart of the Mediterranean, this work links the contrast between play and power to other Carnival realities across the world. It examines the question of power and identity in relation to different social classes and environments of Carnival play, from streets to ballrooms. It looks at satire and censorship, unbridled gaiety and controlled celebration. It describes the ways Carnival was appropriated as a power channel both by the British and their Maltese subjects, and ultimately how it was manipulated in the struggle for Malta’s independence.

Overlooking Lago di Orta in the foothills of the Northern Italian Alps, the Renaissance-era Sacro Monte di Orta (a UNESCO World Heritage site) is spectacle and hagiography, theme park and treatise. Sacro Monte di Orta is a sacred mountain complex that extolls the life of St. Francis of Assisi through fresco, statuary, and built environment. Descending from the vision of the 16th-century Archbishop Carlo Borromeo, the design and execution of the chapels express the Catholic Church's desire to define, or, perhaps redefine itself for a transforming Christian diaspora. And in the struggle to provide a spiritual and geographical front against the spread of Protestantism into the Italian peninsula, the Catholic Church mustered the most powerful weapon it had: the widely popular native Italian saint, Francis of Assisi.Sacred Views of Saint Francis: The Sacro Monte di Orta examines this important pilgrimage site where Francis is embraced as a ne plus ultra saint. The book delves into a pivotal moment in the life of the Catholic Church as revealed through the artistic program of the Sacro Monte's twenty-one chapels, providing a nuanced understanding of the role the site played in the Counter-Reformation.The Sacro Monte di Orta was, in its way, a new hagiographical text vital to post-Tridentine Italy. Sacred Views provides research and analysis of this popular, yet critically neglected Franciscan devotional site. Sacred Views is the first significant scholarly work on the Sacro Monte di Orta in English and one of the very few full-length treatments in any language. It includes a catalogue of artists, over one hundred photographs, maps, short essays on each chapel, and longer essays that examine some of the most significant chapels in greater detail.

An exploration of the meanings of the Andalusian carnival, focusing in particular on the songs, or coplas. The author offers translations of many of these carnival productions, and contends that they are less about revolution or politics, than about the ambivalence of all human feeling.