Over the weekend, I presented a keynote address at the Good Laugh, Bad Laugh, Ugly Laugh, My Laugh conference organized by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Western Ontario. My trip to London was limited due to teaching obligations, but what I did see of the panels and papers was very impressive. There are few conferences devoted exclusively to the study of laughter (or humour for that matter), so it was both refreshing and inspiring to discuss larger themes, theories, and topics related directly to this body of work. I received some wonderful feedback on my work and was encouraged by many to post my Prezi somewhere on the web. You can access it directly via my public Prezi account or scroll through the embedded text below. Choose your poison. Once the paper itself is ready to be submitted for publication, I'll post the article in draft form here or on my Academia.edu page. If you have any follow up comments or questions, I'd love to read them.
Here are the four examples I discussed in my talk:
For redundancy sake, I’m re-posting a delicious passage on the dangers of laughter, gleaned from Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son (1748). Happy reading!
