Proposal for Special Session for MLA 2000:
"Fear of Comedy" seeks to explore the relationship between comedy and
contemporary myths of anxiety. This session will question if the
trivialization of comedy (as cheap, as quotidian, as temporary relief or
distraction from things that "really matter") is related in some way to
the fear that, if left to its own devices, comedy will tell us stories
about our own anxieties that we simply do not want to hear. Is our
allegiance to the rigid and often bumbling discourse of seriousness due to
our fear that comedy will address our fears with more honesty and resolve?
It is my hope that this session moves beyond the assumptions that
prompt such familiar questions and explores new ways of imagining how
comedy functions in contemporary literature and culture. I am inviting
papers that demonstrate an interest in seeing comedy as something fuller
than a cultural safety valve, something more complex, even, than a form of
aggressive-defensive self-assertion --which is as close as we can come, it
often seems, to espousing comedy's virtues.
Do we, or need we, really fear comedy?
Send 1-2 page abstracts and brief vitae by March 15 to: John Bruns,
Department of English, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
90089. FAX: 213-740-0377. E-mail: bruns@scf.usc.edu
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