Call for Proposals: MLA panels on Humour & Humourlessness

Type of post: Association news item
Sub-type: No sub-type
Posted By: Sarah Balkin
Status: Current
Date Posted: Mon, 14 Feb 2022

The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association is sponsoring two guaranteed panels on "humor and humorlessness" (one pre-1900, one post-1900): 

Humor and Humorlessness before 1900

The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) announces a sponsored session entitled “Humor and Humorlessness before 1900” to be held at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023.

From the medieval period to the nineteenth century the concept of humor shifted from an aspect of human physiology, to the eccentric qualities of individuals or comic characters, to a mode of seeing that was also a cultural sensibility (Daniel Wickberg, The Senses of Humor). That the modern “sense of humor” emerged during the nineteenth century, a period better known for its moral seriousness, suggests the dialectical relation of humor and its opposites. We welcome proposals on humor and humorlessness in drama and performance prior to 1900. We are especially interested in papers that foreground sites outside of the U.S. and Britain or that explore understudied subjects in our field. Some possible questions: How did theatre genres and performance traditions present humor and its opposites? How do performed humor and humorlessness intersect cultural histories of race, class, gender, and sexuality? When and why did humorlessness become a performance?

Please submit brief bios and 250-word abstracts by March 15, 2021 to Sarah Balkin sarah.balkin@unimelb.edu.au and Darren Gobert rdg37@duke.edu.


Humor and Humorlessness after 1900

The Drama and Performance Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) announces a sponsored session entitled “Humor and Humorlessness after 1900” to be held at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023.

Humor denotes the capacity to appreciate or express what is funny; it is an index of shared feeling. Humorlessness lacks or refuses this sharing; it often pejoratively describes people or groups who object to jokes at their expense. We welcome proposals on humor and humorlessness in drama and performance after 1900. We are especially interested in papers that foreground sites outside of the U.S. and Britain or that explore understudied subjects in our field. Some possible questions: How have twentieth and twenty-first-century plays and performances deployed humor and humorlessness as modes of belonging, exclusion, resistance, and refusal? How have comedians and other performance makers navigated shifts in what audiences understand to be funny? What can drama and performance contribute to contemporary debates about political correctness and taking a joke?

Please submit brief bios and 250-word abstracts by March 15, 2021 to Sarah Balkin sarah.balkin@unimelb.edu.au and Darren Gobert rdg37@duke.edu.