Courses: Laughter (CSTSB671001)

Spring 2008

Class Number: 2079
A recent efflorescence of works explores emotion, gesture, and
performance. But what of an elusive phenomenon that betrays emotion,
that must be performed, but which falls into no easy category?
Fundamentally involuntary and unpredictable, laughter may challenge or
confirm the possibilities of communication. It is heard in the triumph
of the tyrant and the resistance of the martyr. What people may laugh
at, and why, offers a vivid and unconventional glimpse of an age or a
moment. This seminar will investigate laughter especially the ways
in which it challenges conventional epistemological categories and
philosophical reasoning, and lays bare the gendered assumptions behind
them. We shall move from foundational discussions of laughter
Bergson, Freud, Koestler to contemporary thinkers on the subject
Caverero, Cixous, Hutcheon. We shall explore the ethics of laughter
and their consequences for how we comport ourselves in the world.
Rather than being considered an epiphenomenon, laughter will be
fundamental to a new framework of critique and response. The seminar
is open to all students in the Graduate Group. The discussion of
theoretical texts in the main seminar meeting will be supplemented for
Latinists by an extra hour each week reading germane classical texts.