CFP: AHSA Panel at 2025 Critical Humor Studies Association Conference in Claremont, CA (April 25-26, 2025)
The American Humor Studies Association (AHSA) is putting together a pre-constituted panel for submission to the 2025 Critical Humor Studies Association (CHSA) conference, held at Pomona College in Claremont, CA from April 25-26, 2025. The CHSA emphasizes critical study and discourse of all aspects of humor, drawing on critical theory, antiracist struggles, decolonial thought, and feminist praxis in order to counter institutional and structural biases—you can read more about the organization here. The CHSA inaugural conference theme is “Critical Humor Studies in Times of Crisis: Aesthetics, Approaches, and Application.”
This call for papers invites you to submit an abstract for a paper/presentation for an AHSA sponsored panel that considers how humor has been and continues to be key to both constituting and criticizing the legibility of “America” as a concept, place, and cultural habitus.
The panel, entitled “What’s so funny about America?” welcomes a variety of papers and approaches to thinking about “America,” including:
— examinations of the how the affective resonances and/or emotional responses to different modalities of humor (e.g., satire, burlesque, parody) reinforce and/or disrupt the partisan, ideological defaults in American media (and other forms of public discourse);
— comic feminist/queer/trans & BIPOC critical interventions in key historical constituents of America, including racism, heterosexism, patriarchal norms, cissexist values;
— historical and contemporary examinations of pranks, wisecracks, name calling, zingers in American institutional politics, and/or specific figures who “play the fool,” bully, or act impishly with social consequences;
— explorations of “America” as a site and subject of ridicule, either from within or beyond the United States of America, especially in the circulation of memes and social content on contemporary internet platforms;
— case studies of film, TV, social media, video games, podcasts, stand-up, improv, media platforms, literature in which laughter and Americana intersect;
— analyses of how humor serves to export American cultural/national values by other means than diplomacy, conflict, war, etc.;
— articulations of the limits of humor as an instrument for internal political critique and change when it comes to addressing key issues confronting the American project (e.g., climate change, economic inequality).
Our hope is that the papers presented at the CHSA conference help the AHSA to continue our ongoing goal of thinking about the limitations, possibilities, and specificity of “America,” and the history and consequences of the first A in AHSA (i.e., “American”).
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract for your paper, and
include your full name and your organization.
Submit your submissions to M Dalebout at [email protected]
deadline for submissions is January 6, 2024
Please circulate widely. Anyone can submit materials, though all selected presenters must be current AHSA members by no later than April 1, 2025. Responses to individual submissions for this panel (including acceptances and/or calls for revision) will be sent out by January 10th. Accepted presentations will then be submitted together as a panel in advance of the CHSA 2025 submission deadline, for their consideration.
Please direct any questions you might have to M Dalebout, VP of the AHSA ([email protected])!