Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
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Leeds Beckett hosting special event celebrating the role of women in carnivals
Mama Dread playing the 'All Ah We Migrants' Mas in Leeds West Indian Carnival 2017, credit: Max Farrar
The event will take place on Wednesday 31 August after this year’s Leeds West Indian Carnival. It will bring together the academic and artistic people involved in carnivals around the world including the famous New Orleans Mardi Gras, and will explore various aspects of the role of women including:
- Highlighting the craft and labour involved in the creation of carnivals, which usually lands on the shoulders of women and is not adequately celebrated.
- Exploring the politics of black and brown women’s bodies in carnival.
- Bringing together a network of women who are changing carnival to provide a platform for feminist politics in an often traditionally male-dominated and patriarchal field.
Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, a Reader and lecturer in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities, is leading the event alongside Drs Cathy Thomas and Adeola Dewis: Emily explains: “Caribbean carnivals are often seen as being all about hedonism, parties, and jerk chicken, but they are rooted in a culture of resistance to oppression.
“Leeds-based carnival troupe Mama Dread will be taking on a traditional Trinidadian masquerade called Midnight Robber this year, whose role is to speak truth to power. The troupe, dedicated to telling stories and making social comment through costumes, dances, and designs, will be discussing their work at the event.
“The event will also feature key participants from Trinidad, who have been using carnival in different ways to highlight women’s rights, including domestic and sexual abuse. There will also be a dance workshop with Anonymas, a dynamic Leeds-based carnival troupe.”
Leeds has the longest-running Caribbean-rooted carnival in Europe – this event will reinforce Leeds’s cultural richness and diversity globally, with carnival representatives attending from New Orleans, across the United States and the Caribbean.
In this article
Professor Emily Zobel Marshall
Emily's research is informed by postcolonial theory and includes examinations of constructions of identity, race and racial politics and Caribbean carnival cultures. She is particularly interested in forms of cultural resistance and cross-cultural fertilisation in the face of colonialism.
Emily is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012, University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019, Rowman and Littlefield). She is also a published poet with two poetry collections published by Peepal Tree Press, Bath of Herbs (2019) and Other Wild (2025).
Emily is a qualified Mountain Leader and a Black Girls Hike Leader with research interests and publications in decolonising the countryside and The Black Outdoors.
