"Reading Laughter."
Proposal for a special session for MLA 2001 Convention (12/27-30)
We invite contributors to explore the two-way conjunction between reading
and laughter. In their _Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory_,
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle suggest that “what produces laughter is an
experience of reading”; similarly, Dorian
Corey, the eminent cultural critic of Jennie Livingston’s _Paris Is
Burning_, connects laughter to the practice of reading. Taking our cue from
these two examples, we seek to explore not only the ways in which one can
read laughter but also the ways in which laughter itself reads, is itself
reading. In other words, is there a theory of reading in theory of laughter?
Does the experience of laughter help us understand, or reopen, the question
of reading? Does laughter-as-reading produce knowledge or does laughter
necessarily
introduce a moment of unintelligibility into a theory of reading?
We welcome contributions addressing the problem of laughter as a question
located on the threshold of literature and theory. Particularly, we are
interested in issues such as politics, community, and futurity, raised, for
example, in the texts of Baudelaire, Freud, Bergson, and Bataille.
Abstracts or finished papers, with short cv’s, must be *received* by March
23rd. Please send double submissions to the addresses below. ELECTRONIC
SUBMISSIONS ARE ENCOURAGED.
Peter Rehberg
New York University
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
726 Broadway, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10003
email. pr243@nyu.edu
Mikko Tuhkanen
The State University of New York at Buffalo
Department of Comparative Literature
636 Clemens Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-4610
email. mtuhkanen@hotmail.com
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