Call for Papers, ALA 2025, Boston

The American Humor Studies Association (AHSA) plans to offer three panels.

One panel, “New Directions,” will provide an opportunity for innovative thinking on new and old topics.

This first panel will give priority to early career scholars—untenured faculty, newly-minted PhDs, and graduate students writing dissertations.

The second panel will be open-ended, but we will be especially interested in papers focusing on comic artifacts in digital formats, e. g. texts and images produced by generative AI, memes, viral videos, comment threads in social media platforms or websites.

The third panel will be co-sponsored with the Research Society for American Periodicals: “Humor and/in Periodicals in the Long 19th Century.”

The Constance Rourke travel award is available for graduate students on a panel. The award varies between $100 – $300 (depending on AHSA funds and the number of applicants) to help defray the cost of attending conferences with AHSA-sponsored panels.

We also remind everyone that AHSA has in place a mentoring program to help emerging scholars prepare an essay for publication. Presenting at ALA can be the first step to being published.

Please send a 250 word abstract and a brief biography by January 15, 2025. All panel participants must be AHSA members before the ALA conference opens on May 21st.

AHSA co-presidents
Teresa Prados-Torreira (tprados-torreira@colum.edu)
Jim Caron  (caron@hawaii.edu)