NeMLA

58th Annual Convention, Newport, RI March 6-9 2027

CALL FOR PAPERS

Jokes in Dark Times: Humor, Crisis, and the Postdigital Public Sphere

Panel Chair: Ana León-Távora

Virtual session

This panel explores the role of humor as a mode of civic discourse in an era marked by political instability, humanitarian crisis, and rapidly evolving digital environments. In postdigital contexts, where distinctions between online and offline, textual and visual, human and algorithmic are increasingly blurred, humor circulates across nations, platforms, and publics, shaping how individuals and communities engage with urgent social, political, and ethical questions.

We invite contributions that examine how humor operates within and across literary, linguistic, cultural, and media forms to mediate experiences of crisis and to foster, challenge, or complicate civic dialogue. How do jokes, satire, irony, and other comedic forms respond to conditions of precarity, conflict, and uncertainty? In what ways does humor enable critique, resilience, solidarity—or, conversely, exclusion, distortion, or harm—within contemporary public spheres? By bringing together perspectives across disciplines, this panel aims to consider how humor functions not merely as entertainment, but as a critical site for negotiating meaning, power, and community in postdigital times. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

•     Humor and political discourse in times of crisis
•     Satire, irony, and narrative in contemporary literature and media
•     Memes, digital humor, and platformed publics
•     Humor and the representation of race, ethnicity, trauma, and disability
•     Ethical and affective dimensions of humor in humanitarian contexts
•     Translation, multilingual humor, and cross-cultural circulation
•     Humor as resistance, coping, or survival in conditions of instability
•     The limits of humor: offense, misinterpretation, cancelling, and polarization

Please, send 300-word abstracts and a brief bio to ana.leon-tavora@salem.edu by September 30th 2026.

This panel is conceived as the starting point for a collaborative edited volume, and presenters will be invited to contribute their work for possible inclusion.