W, 10:10 AM-12:40 PM, MJ 151
Required film screening: M, 7:00 PM-10:00 PM, MJ 151
Open to Graduates Only!

Instructor: Susan Seizer
E-Mail: sseizer@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 150
Phone: 856-1986

This seminar begins from the premise that humor is a good site for
the ethnographic study of culture. We will look at a variety of
cultural contexts for humor, from staged public performance to
private joking, and be primarily concerned with the many and varied
social uses to which humor is put. Our focus this spring will be the
(very male) world of stand-up comedy, and the women who brave it.
While grounded in humor theory, we will explore how our
understanding of theoretical models changes when we engage in making
comedy of our own (yes, we will!). Our springboard for the study of
theories of gendered humor will be Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation
to the Unconscious. In studying Freud’s paradigm in relation to
other theoretical models, and updating these with our own, our aim
is to recognize the role of cultural knowledge in what we find
funny.