This is a Call for Papers for an online workshop titled Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture. The workshop asks what humor can contribute to our understanding of perpetrators by examining a selection of works from contemporary American literature and popular culture. Does humor help demythologize certain perpetrators whose international fame turned them into quasi-mythical figures? Can the ownership of humorous content about a traumatic situation or process endured by a specific marginalized community be transferred to other communities? How can humor successfully target perpetrators without inadvertently trivializing the suffering of the victims and survivors? What can different sub-genres of comedy and humor do differently when it comes to the representation of perpetrators and their deeds? 

Please send all inquiries and proposals (a title, 250-word abstract, and 100-word bio) to Mihaela Precup at mihaela.precup@lls.unibuc.ro. The deadline for proposals is November 12, 2023. The workshop will take place online on November 25, 2023.

A selection of the papers will be published in the 2025 issue of the open-access double-blind peer reviewed journal [Inter]sections (www.intersections-journal.com).

This workshop is part of PCE research project 101/2021, “Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture,” offered by UEFISCDI.