CFP: Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism: Interdisciplinary Approaches

The Department of History at Durham University invites proposals for a two-day conference exploring the role of humour as a political coping mechanism. ‘Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism’ will illuminate the uses of humour across disciplines and periods, stimulating fresh conversations about the actions and expressions that constitute resistance to power. The conference will take place on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 March 2025 in the Calman Learning Centre (Durham University). We plan to publish selected essays from the conference in an edited volume.

We solicit proposals for individual papers on topics and approaches related to political humour from every historical period up to the present day. Presenters may choose to discuss instances of humour in various venues and media, such as archival sources, memoirs, oral interviews, published works, visual arts, radio and television broadcasts.

While we welcome proposals as diverse as the varieties and applications of humour, we suggest the following overarching topics: 

1) humour as a resistance strategy in the public sphere; 

2) humour and laughter in wartime; 

3) humour and everyday life under dictatorship;

4) humour and challenges to gender roles; 

5) transnational, multilingual, and comparative views of humour; 

6) humour as a challenge to authoritarianism; 

7) humour and race; 

8) satirical publications and censorship; 

9) humour and free speech in the age of social media.

The conference will revolve around two key questions: How does humour act as a political coping mechanism, and is it effective? The function of humour as self-defence has been studied and theorized from Sigmund Freud – in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) – to more recent treatments of the topic, not least by scholars of the Holocaust (Chaya Ostrower, Steve Lipman) who suggest that humour helped deportees survive in concentration camps. Fascist and far-right propaganda provoked mockery by political opponents, turning humour against the cult of fascist leaders into a form of resistance to authoritarianism. Contemporary examples are not hard to find: pandemic-era jokes and memes drawing on gallows humour to debunk misinformation, the invasion of Ukraine leading to an explosion of humour amidst the hardships of the war. Humour remains a common tactic for activists, protestors, and artists who contest proliferating far-right and populist regimes. 

Our conference builds on recent scholarship in treating fascism and authoritarianism as phenomena that must be understood in a transnational and global fashion. We aim to connect an interdisciplinary range of scholars, at all career levels, who will draw on disciplines such as history, literature, political science, and journalism to illuminate the political uses of laughter.

Please submit proposals of c.250-300 words for 20-minute papers to Benedetta Carnaghi at the following address: [email protected]. Use the subject line ‘Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism’. The extended deadline for submissions is Sunday, 15 September 2024.

Further information about the conference, including potential bursaries, will be announced at a later stage. 

Benedetta Carnaghi and Helen Roche

(Conference organisers)