Full Description
This essay collection is dedicated to intersections between gender theories and theories of laughter, humour, and comedy. It is based on the results of a three-year research programme, entitled "Gender - Laughter - Media" (2003-2006) and includes a series of investigations on traditional and modern media in western cultures from the 18th to the 20th century. A theoretical opening part is followed by four thematic sections that explore the multiple forms of irritating stereotypical gender perceptions; aspects of (post-)colonialism and multiculturalism; the comic impact of literary and media genres in different national cultures; as well as the different comic strategies in fictional, philosophical, artistic or real life communication. The volume presents a variety of new approaches to the overlaps between gender and laughter that have only barely been considered in groundbreaking research. It forms a valuable read for scholars of literary, theatre, media, and cultural studies, at the same time reaching out to a general readership.
Contents
Gaby Pailer: Introduction
I. Gender - Laughter - Media: Theoretical Crossings
Stefan Horlacher: A Short Introduction to Theories of Humour, the Comic, and Laughter
Andreas Böhn: Subversions of Gender Identities through Laughter and the Comic?
II. Gender B(l)ending: The Comic Impact of Cross-Dressing and Body Alteration
Jessica Hamann: "Kiss a white Galathea, she will laugh and blush": Laughter, Blush, and Gender Roles in Gottfried
Keller's Novella Cycle A Formula for Love. The Epigram (1881)
Beth Pentney: "A comic turn, turned serious": Humour, Body Modification, and the Natural in Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She Devil
Raluca Cernahoschi: "From now on, I am Carmen": Imagining Cross-Dressing as Comic Protest in the Life and Work of Romanian-German Author Franz Hodjak
Ulrich Scheck: Where No Woman Has Gone Before: Humour and Gender Crossing in Star Trek's Voyager and Enterprise
Markus Hallensleben: "To be educated is to become a Harlequin": Cross-Skinning as Carnivalesque Hybridity in
Michel Serres, Hannah Höch's Dada, and Orlan's Body Art
III. Cross-Cultural Encounters: Race, Gender, and the Comic
Gaby Pailer: Multi-Layered Conflicts with the Norm: Gender and Cultural Diversity in Two Comedies of the German Enlightenment
Sabine Wilke: Indigenous Laughter: The Voice of the Other in Tales from the "South Seas"
Gabrijela Mecky Zaragoza: Subverting the Pantragic Heroine: Nestroy against Hebbel
Jakub Kazecki: Black and White in Color or Black Victory? The Comic Effect of Displacement in the Film Noirs et blancs en couleur (1976) by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Karin Lornsen: The City as Stage of Transgression: Performance, Picaresque Reminiscences, and Linguistic Incongruity in Emine S. Özdamar's The Bridge of the Golden Horn
IV. Gender, Genre, and the Comic: Literature, Radio,Television, and Cinema
Andreas Seidler: Moral Ideal and Physical Desire: Gender Roles, Sex, and Comic Elements in the Rococo Tales of
Christoph Martin Wieland
Birte Giesler: Social Satire, Literary Parody, and Gender Critique in French and German Fairy Tales of the Enlightenment: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friederike Helene Unger
Ellie Kennedy: "But I'm a Lady!" Undoing Gender Bending in Contemporary British Radio Comedy
Peter Stear: Mockumentalism: Re-Casting the Void in Contemporary British TV Comedy
Christine Mielke: Couples and Friends: Comic Strategies and Social Structures in German and American Comedy Series
Frank Degler: Affirmative Humour in Bully Herbig's Parody of Star Wars/Star Trek: (T)Raumschiff Surprise
V. Comic Strategies: Gender and Laughter in Literature, Theory, Communication, and Art
Susanne Bach: May I Laugh about Women's Lib? or: The Difficult Relationship of Humour and Feminism in
Margaret Atwood, Caryl Churchill, and Helen Fielding
Stefan Börnchen: Aletheia as Striptease: Gendered Allegories of Truth in Heidegger, Gorgias, and Barthes
Volker Helbig: Judith Butler and the Problem of Adequacy, or: The Epistemological Dimension of Laughter
Caroline L. Rieger: Comparing Same-Gender and Opposite-Gender Conversations: a Laughing Matter?
Oliver C. Speck: The Joy of Anti-Art: Subversion through Humour in Dada
List of Contributors
