The American Humor Studies Association seeks proposals for this panel at the American Literature Association Conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Embarcadero Center, on May 27-30, 2010.

Humor and the Great Divide

Sometimes we seem alien to one another—separated by the gulfs of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, class, and/or region, the gaps between us can seem too big to bridge. Faced with such divisions, we often turn to humor, either to help us across those divisions or else to reify their boundaries. This panel seeks proposals that explore and analyze the ways in which humor is used to define or re-define difference, to entrench the boundaries or to shift the ground so that often-surprising laughter carries us across the great divide.

Papers to be presented should run no longer than twenty minutes.
Please send 250-word abstracts or complete papers to:
Sharon D. McCoy, University of Georgia, Session Chair
sdmccoy@uga.edu
Deadline: January 20, 2010