Schedule:

Thursday May 24th 2007

12.00 - 15.00

Registration and welcome buffet.

16.00 - 19.00

Frances Gray,
University of Sheffield, UK.

On being English and embarrassed : British sitcom

Paul Lewis
Boston College, (MA) USA

From Nightmares on Elm Street to Abu Ghraib: Humor and Horror

Sharon Lockyer
Brunel University, UK

‘Organs’, ‘Maths’ and ‘Canes’: Language, Ambiguity and Television Comedy

Giselinde Kuipers
University of Amsterdam, NL

The Cultural Industry of Humor

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Friday May 25th 2007

9.30 - 12.30

WORKSHOP I

Frances Gray

Comedy and status

15.00 - 18.00

WORKSHOP II

Paul Lewis

Fake News, Controversial Humor and the Media
Looks at a number of media-driven humor events from the global conflict that resulted from the distribution of the now-(in)famous Danish cartoons to the popularity of fake-news comic characters (including Borat, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart) and Web sites (such as The Onion, ScrappleFace.com, and The White House.org). The focus will be on recent, even current, eruptions of joke and antijoke response in the US, including Dave Chappelle's decision not to return to do a third season for Comedy Central, the racist rant of Michael (Kramer) Richards in a Los Angeles comedy club, and the debuting of Fox News's comedy show, "The ½ Hour News Hour." In addition to questions about the social functions of humor, workshop participants will be encouraged to think about the role media, especially new media, play as both a subject of and a platform for these events. In addition to discussing provocative humor, participants will work in small groups on writing fake-news stories.

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Saturday May 26th 2007

9.30 - 12.30

WORKSHOP III

Sharon Lockyer

Approaches to Analysing Television Comedy