Judith Yaross Lee Publication Grant in American Humor Studies
Sponsored and funded by the American Humor Studies Association, this program is designed to provide individualized attention and support for emerging scholars who would like to submit an article on humor/comedy studies for publication. Graduate students and those who earned their Ph.D.s in 2020 are welcome to apply.
For graduate students, the process of planning, drafting, revising, submitting and re-revising is often one of trial-and-error, with varying levels of guidance coming from their department. The AHSA recognizes that scholars working in humor/comedy often work with advisors who are not trained in this specialty. The objective of the mentorship program is to provide tailored, expert feedback on potential scholarship and to support and build the humor/comedy studies field.
Those selected to participate will be matched with a mentor in their area who will meet with the mentee regularly to both help plot a trajectory for publication and to provide feedback on scholarship. Projects in early stages of development will be considered—from initial conceptualization to those in the drafting phase—and should be on any aspect of American humor/comedy—broadly defined. Mentees are encouraged to submit their finished article to the AHSA’s journal Studies in American Humor but are also welcome to submit to the journal of their choosing.
The duration of the program will vary based on the state of the project at the beginning of the mentorship period, but most timelines to completion will be between three and six. Mentees will receive a 1-year membership to the AHSA and a $100 stipend upon submission of their article.
To apply, please send a CV and an abstract of your proposed project (200-300 words) to ahsa.humorstudies@gmail.com. Initial review of applications will begin on June 30th, 2020. For more information, see the description here.
Judith Yaross Lee, Charlie Award Winner, 2017
This award is named in honor of former Studies in American Humor editor Judith Yaross Lee. Lee took courses on Mark Twain and American humor with Hamlin Hill at the University of Chicago and never looked back. Her yet-unpublished dissertation, To Amuse and Appall: Black Humor in American Fiction (1986), ran too ambitiously from Melville to Philip Roth, but taught tenacity in the ten-year process of finishing it after Ham decamped for New Mexico. She has since published five books–including the monographs Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America(1992), Defining New Yorker Humor (2000), and Twain’s Brand: Humor in Contemporary American Culture (2012)–as well as sixty essays, and four special journal issues, most notably the landmark triple issue of Studies in American Humor, Mad Magazine and Its Legacies (2014), co-edited with John Bird. As editor of Studies in American Humor (2013-17), she built on her experiences as associate editor of The Markham Review (1978-89) and founding coeditor of Explorations in Media Ecology (2001-04). Lee recently retired as the Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, Charles E. Zumkehr Professor of Rhetoric & Public Culture, and Director of the Central Region Humanities Center at Ohio University, where she taught since 1990; in 2016 she was Fulbright Senior Professor of American Culture at Leiden University in The Netherlands. She received her Charlie Award on May 26, 2017.
American Humor Studies Association 