No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality and Ethnicity
Monday September 24, 2007 - Friday November 16, 2007.
During the fall term 2007, the Leslie Humanities Center will host an international Institute on Visual Humor. The two-month Institute will bring together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines and practicing artists to discuss the role visual humor has played from antiquity to the present in disseminating ideas of race, nationality and ethnicity.
Humor can be a form of self-assertion and of defense; it can also be a particularly effective weapon to ridicule others, as so often the case in visual satire and caricature. The Institute will aim to deepen our understanding of humor's wounding and healing properties by addressing, among other things, the following questions: Can visual stereotypes be more damaging than verbal stereotypes? Can visual stereotypes be critically 'adopted' but also internalized by those stereotyped? Can visual humor be shared across racial, national and ethnic divisions? How do humor and laughter function in establishing difference and community? What is the role of 'passing' and disguise in visual humor? Are there common strategies in using humor to demean racial, national or ethnic groups? Does such humor work differently in different media e.g. printed satire, film, video, television, or performance? What is the interplay between the visual, acoustic/verbal, and performative? What gender, class, and age issues are raised by visual humor? The Institute will hold lectures and workshops and will work closely with Dartmouth institutions such as the Hopkins Center and the Hood Museum of Art to screen films, stage a major performance, and organize an exhibition; these will be accompanied by formal and informal discussions.
Several Dartmouth faculty and a select group of visiting residential fellows, led by David Bindman (Morton Distinguished Fellow) and Angela Rosenthal (Dartmouth Institute Director), will meet weekly on campus to investigate the above questions from historical and contemporary perspectives, and in diverse media and cultural contexts. In addition, a series of guest speakers will present lectures about the impact of visual humor on history, psychology, culture and everyday life. No Laughing Matter is organized by the Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, with the participation of the Yale Center for British Art, and the Du Bois Institute of African and African-American Studies at Harvard. The Humanities Institute will host an international conference to be held between 8th and 11th November 2007. Speakers will be invited to complement the research of the Institute's fellows.
Fellows will be invited to share their research by giving a formal presentation of their work either internally, to the Institute's seminar participants, or publicly, to a wider audience on campus. By providing a sociable forum we hope to foster in-depth discussion and intellectual exchange. We also hope to publish a book at the end of the Institute that would include papers from both the culminating conference and the weekly seminar meetings of the fellows. All fellows will be expected to stay for the entire Institute between Monday September 24, 2007 and Friday November 16, 2007.
The public events organized in conjunction with the Humanities Institute have been generously supported by the following partners:
Allen and Joan Bildner Fund; John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding; Dean of Faculty and Dean of Humanities Research Grant; W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Hood Museum of Art; Hopkins Center for the Arts; Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity; Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program; Office of Pluralism and Leadership; Office of the Provost; Yale Center for British Art; and the Departments and Programs of African and African-American Studies; Art History; Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Classics; English; Film and Television Studies; German Studies; Jewish Studies; Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies; Spanish and Portuguese; Theater; and Women's and Gender Studies.
Angela Rosenthal, Dartmouth Faculty Director
David Bindman, Morton Senior Fellow and Co-Director
Image credit: Enrique Chagoya, Mexican, born 1953. Utopian Cannibal.Org, 2000, (detail) of thirteen-color lithograph and woodcut with chine colle and collage. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Purchased through a gift from Jan Seidler Ramirez, Class of 1973