Grasping Joy: New-Wave Carnival Krewes in New Orleans is anthropologist Martha Radice’s research project on the ‘new wave’ of carnival krewes and carnival masking in New Orleans. It focuses on the walking krewes that make their costumes, floats, and throws by hand, and that parade on foot rather than riding on floats. Based at Dalhousie University in Halifax (Canada), Martha has been visiting New Orleans to do ethnographic fieldwork in New Orleans since 2016. Many of the interviews Martha has conducted are deposited in the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University Libraries.

Photographer Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee has been involved in the project since it began, and the outdoor photography exhibit Carnival From the Ground Up came out of this collaboration. The exhibit includes other groups who also make carnival by hand and take it to the streets on foot, like Black Masking Indians and Baby Dolls.