No Laughing Matter - Conference Schedule

Thursday, November 8, 2007 - Free and open to the public
Arthur M Loew Auditorium/Hood Museum of Art
4:30 - 4:45 PM Welcome and Introductory Remarks by Barry Scherr, Provost, Dartmouth College and Angela Rosenthal, Humanities Institute Director, Dartmouth College,
4:45 - 5:45 PM Lecture by Kobena Mercer. Independent Scholar, United Kingdom, Carnivalesque and Grotesque: What Bakhtin's Laughter Tells Us About Art and Culture
6:00 - 7:00 PM Reception in Kim Gallery, Hood Museum of Art and viewing of the exhibition No Laughing Matter, Harrington Gallery. Welcome by Brian Kennedy, Director of the Hood Museum of Art, and Katherine Hart, Associate Director and Curator of Academic Programming.

Day 1 : Friday, November 9, 2007
Haldeman Center, Kreindler Conference Hall (Room 041)
9:15 - 10:15 AM Coffee and light breakfast
10:15 - 10:30 AM Welcome and Introductory Remarks (David Bindman, University College London, and Morton Senior Fellow, Dartmouth College)
10:30 AM -12:00 PM Session 1:
  • C. W (Toph) Marshall, University of British Columbia
    Athenian Humor and African Ethnicity in Euripides' Plays of 412
  • Paul Kaplan, Purchase College, SUNY
    Bartolomeo Passerotti and ‘Comic’ Images of Black Africans in Early Modern Italian Art
  • Moderator: Margaret Williamson, Department of Classics, Dartmouth College
12:00 - 1:30 PM Lunch Break
1:30 - 3:00 PM Session 2:
  • K. Dian Kriz, Brown University
    The Physiognomy of 'Black Humor': Graphic Satire and the West Indies on the Eve of Abolition
  • Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, University of Chicago
    Racialized Humor in the Late 19th-century Caribbean: Nation, Desire,
    War
  • Moderator: Israel Reyes, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, Dartmouth College
3:00 - 3:15 PM Coffee Break
3:15 - 4:45 PM Session 3:
  • Adam Kern, Harvard University
    "Freakin' Foreigners!" Discourse on Cultural and Corporeal Others in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Comicbooks
  • M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College
    Ollie Harrington’s Dark Laughter: African-American Cartoonist in Exile
  • Moderator: Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Department of English, Dartmouth College
8:00 PM and 10:00 PM Standup Comedy by Dean Obeidallah, Bentley Theater, Hopkins Center

Day 2: Saturday, November 10, 2007
Haldeman Center, Kreindler Conference Hall (Room 041)
9:00 - 9:30 AM Coffee and light breakfast
9:30 - 11:00 AM Session 4:
  • Frank Felsenstein, Ball State University
    "Which is the Merchant...and Which the Jew?": Stereotypes of Jews in English Graphic Humor
  • Josh Kun, University of Southern California
    My Name Was José Jiménez: The Afterlife of a Joke
  • Moderator: Susannah Heschel, Department of Religion and Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
11:00 - 11:15 AM Coffee Break
11:15 - 12:45 PM Session 5:
  • Marty Favor, Dartmouth College
    "Is it cos I's Black?": Da Ali G Show and Postmodern Minstrelsy
  • Jacqueline Stewart, Northwestern University
    Changing the Joke? Race Humor in the Race Movies of Oscar Micheaux & Spencer Williams
  • Moderator: Ayo Coly, African and African-American Studies, Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
12:45 - 2:30 PM Lunch Break
1:00 –2:00 PM Visit of the Orozco Murals with Mary Coffey, Department of Art History and Diane Miliotes, Art Institute of Chicago
2:30 - 4:00 PM Session 6:
  • Cherise Smith, University of Texas at Austin
    Bittersweet Blackness: Humor and Identity Performance
  • Roundtable Plenary Discussion with Humanities Instititute Fellows: Michael Chaney, Veronika Fuechtner, Allen Hockley, Esiaba Irobi, Alexandra Karentzos, Ana Merino, Tanya Sheehan, Sam Vasquez, Rebecca Wanzo and Mark Williams.
  • Moderator: Angela Rosenthal, Humanities Institute Director, Dartmouth College
4:00 - 4:30 PM Coffee Break
4:30 - 5:45 PM Christopher Cozier, Trinidad, Artist in Residence, Dartmouth College
"it now have kaiso in it" in collaboration with
David Rudder, Calypsonian, Vocalist, Musical Composer
6:00 - 7:30 PM Reception at the Norwich Inn

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.