A lively and exciting analysis of one of the United States' oldest Mardi Gras celebrations

Isabel Machado specializes in the fields of gender and sexuality studies and celebration studies, focusing more specifically on carnivals and drag competitions. She has published articles in Oral History Journal, Journal of Festive Studies, O Olho da História, and Study the South.

Isabel Machado's profile page

Carnival in Alabama makes a transformative contribution to the historiography of Mobile's Mardi Gras, and an indispensable addition to the growing body of scholarship on Carnival traditions throughout the United States.

Christian DuComb, author of Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia

Isabel Machado's Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile not only adds much needed content to the literature, but it also provides a neutral account. She writes from an observer's perspective, supported by personal interviews and research in local archives. Her writing is clean, insightful, and fast-paced, both accessible and informative for a general audience and stimulating for academics.

Journal of American Folklore

Machado's focus on LGBTQ+ and African American engagement in the Mobile Mardi Gras celebration is fascinating and underexplored in other studies.

Carolyn E. Ware, author of Cajun Women and Mardi Gras: Reading the Rules Backward

“Carnival in Mobile” is undeniably academic, but in no way dry. Its concepts, analyses and approach bear a coolly rational tone that balances with the festive and sometimes debaucherous core of its subject matter. And it is the most deeply immersive book on Mobile Mardi Gras that I have ever seen.

Kevin Lee

This erudite work is recommended for anyone interested in local Southern lore, the mythology of Carnival, or reckoning with the racial and homophobic prejudice and violence of the past.

Georgia Library Quarterly

I loved this book as both a social/cultural history and as a work of festival studies. Machado rejects any easy dismissal of this Gulf Coast city or its people and expertly illuminates the historical processes and operations of race, class, and gender in Mobile's Mardi Gras history.

Jay Watkins, senior lecturer in history at William & Mary and author of Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism

Machado's research is solid and deep. . . . Unlike some other writers, she has neither glorified nor distorted the past.

The Alabama Review