“New Orleans food is delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
—Mark Twain
American Humor Studies Association
Mark Twain Circle of America
Fifth Quadrennial Conference
December 4 – 7, 2014
New Orleans, LA
Sheraton Four Points Hotel
French Quarter
Conference Directors
Janice McIntire-Strasburg
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO
Ann M. Ryan
Le Moyne College, New York
Thursday, December 4, 2014
1:00-2:15pm The Coen Brothers: Humoring Form and Adaptation
Session Chair: Ann M. Ryan, Le Moyne College
- “Romancing the American Dream: The Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona and the Romantic Comedy Formula”
Jeffrey Melton, University of Alabama
- “Hitting the Road: The Coen Brothers’ Journey through Film Adaptation”
Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College
- Respondent: Ann M. Ryan, Le Moyne College
2:15-3:30pm History, The Novel, and Autobiography: Humor By Genre
Session Chair: Janice McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis University
- “The Personal is Performative: Race, Satire and the Post-Soul Autobiography”
Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Cornell University
- “ ‘Alternately a Snarl and Laughter’: Black Humor and the new Southern Gothic in Harry Crews’ A Feast of Snakes”
David Buehrer, Valdosta State University
- “The Regenerative Reconstruction of American History Through African American Humor in the Novels of Ishmael Reed and Percival Everett”
Paul Mahaffey, University of Montevallo
3:45-5:00pm Telling it like it is(n’t): Mark Twain and the Language of Power
Session Chair: Ben Click, St. Mary’s College, Maryland
- “Vernacular Humor as Anti-Imperialist Ideology in King Leopold’s Soliloquy”
Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University, Athens
- “How the Other Half Lives: Twain goes Slumming”
Ann M. Ryan, Le Moyne College
Respondent: Ben Click, St. Mary’s College, Maryland
Friday, December 5, 2014
Breakfast: 8:30 – 9am
9 – 10:15am MAD Magazine and its Humor
Session Chair: Ann M. Ryan, Le Moyne College
- “MAD about Poe,”
Dennis Eddings, Western Oregon University
- “Wally Wood: Eroticism and Discontent in the Pages of MAD,”
Joseph W. Slade, Ohio University, Athens
10:30am – 11:45pm The Tramp at 100
Session Chair: Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College
- “Cross-Textual Tramp: How Chaplin’s Screen Persona Surpassed 100 Years,”
Lisa Haven, Ohio University, Zanesville
- “The Power of Sound in Creating Humor: Chaplin the Pioneer in Audio-Gags,”
Aner Preminger, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Sapir College, Sderot
- “Without the Coogan Boy It Couldn’t Be Done: How the Kid Revealed New Facets of Chaplin’s Tramp Persona and Set a New Course for American Comedy,”
Carrie Pomeroy, Independent Scholar
11: 45- 1:15: Lunch
1: 15 – 2:30 pm The Wild Strain’: Twain and His Successors Craft a Humorous Tradition of Nature Writing
Session Chair: James Caron, University of Hawaii, Manoa
- “’A Strain of Wildness’: Twain’s Presence in late 20th and early 21st Nature Writers”
Ben Click, St. Mary’s College, Maryland
- “Urbanites Abroad: Nature in the Humor of The New Yorker”
Brian O’Sullivan, St. Mary’s College, Maryland
- “When the Sky is Falling, Why Humor?”
Kate Chandler, St. Mary’s College, Maryland
2:45-4:00pm Persona, the Physical, and the Performative in Gendered Humor
Session Chair: TBA
- “Persona, Politics and Jeaneane Garafolo’s Right-Wing Media Reception”
Rachel Eliza Blackburn, University of Kansas
- “Feminine, Funny, and Fat: Restoring Sexuality and Femininity to the Fat Female Body, Joshua Lopez, Univerity of Texas, El Paso
- “Laughter and Performative Utopia in Gilda Radner’s Gilda, Live!”
Margaret McFadden, Colby College
- “Kathryn Hepburn and ‘Box Office Poison’ in Hollywood Comedy: Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, and Philadelphia Story
Sheri Chinen- Bieson, Rowan University
4:15 – 5: 30pm New Media, New Humor:
How Do We Do it and Who is Watching/Listening
Session Chair: David E. Sloane, University of New Haven
- “A New Economy of Jokes: Hashtag Social Media, Hashtag Comedy”
Rebecca Krefting, Skidmore College, Rebecca Baruc, Skidmore College
- “The End of the Crowd as We Know It: Dissemination, Deracination, and the Cultural Work of American Comic Discourse,” Bruce Michelson, Emeritus, University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana
- “The New Confessional Comedy: Intimacy and the Environment of Podcasting”
Justin Van Wormer, City University of New York
- “Truth or Truthiness? The New Humor in Early 20th Century America: Buster Keaton’s Playhouse”
Rich Des Rochers, Long Island University
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Breakfast: 8:30 – 9am
9 – 10:15am: Undergraduate Roundtable: Wine and War Crimes: The Interwar Social Commentary of Joseph Kesserling’s Black Comedy in Arsenic and Old Lace
Session Chair: Jennifer Hughes, Averett University
Panelists: Alexander Argentieri, Ricardo Corrales, Becca Mann, Katelyn Riddle
Averett University
10:30am – 11:45pm Picturing Twain
Session Chair: Bruce Michelson
- “Taking Mark Twain Lying Down: Those Photos of Sam Clemens in Bed,” James Caron, University of Hawaii, Manoa
- “Muddling Toward the Modern: How the American Publishing Company and Mark Twain Reimagined Visuals at the Turn of the Century” Debra Cochran, St. Louis University
11:45-1:15: Lunch
1:15 – 2:30pm Stand Up, Politics, and the Subversive Nature of Humor
Session Chair: TBA
- “Jackie ‘Moms’ Mabley and Dick Gregory: The Humor of Two African American Comics and their Discourse on Civil Rights Issues of the 60s,”
David E. Hoffman, Averett University
- “Asleep to Believe It: George Carlin’s American Dream,”
Rob Ribera, Boston University
- “Knock, Knock/ Who’s There: Social Organization Joke Cycles Post-9/11,” Darcy Mullen, University of Albany, SUNY
2:45-4:00pm Humor, Whiteness, Color and Masculinity:
The Work of Stand Up Comedy
Session Chair: Peter Kunze, University of Texas at Austin
- “From Richard Pryor to Kevin Hart: African Americans and Stand Up Concert Films,”
Keith Corson, New York University
- “Louis CK’s Little White Lies: Performing Whiteness as Ideologiekritik,”
Peter Kunze, University of Albany, SUNY
“Subversion and Surrogacy: White Men Standing-Up against Patriarchy,” Jared Champion, Young Harris College.
4:15-5:30pm Down East, Southwest, and the Reformers of Humor
Session Chair: Tracy Wuster
- “Humor and Reformers in the Nineteenth-Century”
Theresa Prados-Torreira, Columbia College, Chicago
- “Humor on the Urban Frontier,” David E.E. Sloane, University of New Haven
- “You Can’t Get There from Here: In Search of Downeast Humor on the Borderlands of Maine”
Peter M. Robinson, College of Mount St. Joseph
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Breakfast: 8:30 – 9am
9 – 10:15am Humor in 19th Century Texts, and Why It Still Matters
Session Chair: Janice McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis University
- “Silent, and Not So Silent Sabotage in Charles Chestnutt’s ‘The Passing of Grandison’” Gretchen Martin, University of Virginia
- “Before and After the War: The Necessity of Including Page’s “Mars Chan” in the Constellation of American Humor,” Tracy Wuster, University of Texas at Austin
- “Sober Mirth and Licentious Jest: Exploring the Paradoxes of Colonial Puritan Humor,” Patrick Brooks, Saint Louis University
American Humor Studies Association 