Dr. Isabel Machado is a Lecturer at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ). A cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries, she specializes in the fields of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Festive Studies. Her first book, Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), uses Mardi Gras as a vehicle to understand social and cultural changes in Mobile, Alabama (USA) in the second half of the 20th century. By exposing the systems of oppression reflected in and reinforced by the celebration, while also acknowledging the festivity’s potential in reaffirming resistance and joy for historically marginalized groups of people, it dialogues with scholarship that focuses on joyful defiance, or Critical Joy Studies.

For the ongoing oral history project, “Queens of the South(s)”, she is interviewing performers who defy gender normativity in different parts of the globe while supporting efforts to create accessible queer community archives in collaboration with local artists, activists, and archivists.

Her work has been published in Study the South, Oral History, O Olho da História, and Journal of Festive Studies (where she currently serves as co-editor-in-chief). She is also a host for the New Books in Gender Studies podcast.

Book

Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile. University Press of Mississippi. (2023)

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“Mista Boo: Portrait of a Drag Witch.” Chapter for The Witch Studies Reader anthology, edited by Jane Ward and Soma Chaudhuri. Duke University Press. (Forthcoming)

Co-authored with Emily Ruth Allen. “Mobile, Alabama’s Joe Cain Procession: A Confederate Memorial or The People’ Parade?” Journal of Festive Studies 3. (2021)

“On the Materiality of Festivity.” Journal of Festive Studies 3. (2021)

“‘Vamos estuprar toda essa maldita paisagem’ Deliverance, o Sul do ‘Sunbelt’ e a crise de masculinidade nos anos 70.” O Olho da História 26. (March 2018)

“Never too big, never too much: how the Order of Osiris helped build a visible LGBTQ community in Mobile, Alabama,” Oral History 46, No 1. (March 2018)

“Revisiting Deliverance: The Sunbelt South, the 1970s Masculinity Crisis, and the Emergence of the Redneck Nightmare Genre.” Study the South. (June 2017)

Website: machadoisabel.com

Email: isabel.machado@ubc.ca