This panel will examine eighteenth-century British fiction and the relationship between violence, obscenity and humor. Novelists' use of the obscene joke is a tempered way to suppress the blurring lines of distinction between classes and to maintain hierarchy, a direct response to the changes in society and to the increasing sensitivity to vulgar subjects in polite society. This panel is interested in discovering how authors mobilize social anxiety through violence, obscenity and humor.

Please send proposals or abstracts of no more than 250 words in the body of an email with your CV as an attachment to Dr. Kathleen Alves: tamayok@stjohns.edu or kalves@qcc.cuny.edu by August 1st.

Information for the convention can be found at http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/