Comedy: Darkness and Light

Fourth Annual Symposium

Call for Abstracts

August 28-30, 2025 London, England

Theme: Comedy: Darkness and Light  In the popular imagination, we might say that tragedy is to comedy as darkness is to light. Tragic art, which explores the depths of the human psyche while laying bare the most painful aspects of the human situation, is typically taken more seriously as art than its comedic counterpart.  Particularly in the realm of film, comedy is often dismissed as pure and/or mere entertainment. As a film genre, comedy is light, flippant, ludicrous, or fun— a pleasant diversion, but not the kind of thing that provokes (much less demands) sustained philosophical scrutiny. Here, the popular imagination may be wrong; comedy may prove as philosophically rich as genres more aligned with the tragic— the very genres (including drama, documentary, film noir, science fiction, war film) that tend to receive more scholarly attention. The aim of this year’s symposium is to take seriously the genre of comedy by approaching comedic films philosophically and as instances of philosophy, while remaining mindful of the nuanced nature of comedy as a genre in which darkness and lightness may dynamically co-exist.   

Abstract Deadline April 15, 2025

Completed papers due July 30, 2025

  Submission Guidelines and Instructions: Extended abstracts should be 500-750 words, with standard font and margins. Deadline: The deadline for receipt of abstracts is April 15, 2025. Any submission received after midnight Pacific time on this date will not be considered. Final papers, no longer than 15 pages, double spaced, must be provided by July 30, 2025 in order to be distributed to all participants in advance of the symposium. This is crucial to the format and success of the symposium, where authors will be provided only 10-12 minutes to summarize, emphasize, or further develop the contents of the full essay. This condensed presentation time, combined with all participants reading each accepted paper and viewing relevant films in advance, is intended to allow substantial time for questions and discussion following each presentation. Please send all submissions as either a Word or PDF attachment to: [email protected]