Film Historian,Psychologist,Artist Walk into Class:Laugh Across Discp (ARTS 2162 L)
Term: 2024-25 Academic Year Spring
Schedule
Tue, 6:15 PM - 8:15 PM (1/22/2025 - 5/6/2025) Location: SLC HEIM 202
Thu, 9:25 AM - 11:25 AM (1/22/2025 - 5/6/2025) Location: SLC PAC REI
Thu, 12:30 PM - 1:25 PM (1/22/2025 - 5/6/2025) Location: SLC HEIM 300
Description
Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual...) In this lecture with weekly seminars, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of placing laughter at the center of our discourse is to think and play across disciplines to explore the many contradictory ideas and experiences signified by laughter, from humor and collective joy to unease and social rupture. For weekly class assignments, students will be asked to conduct observational studies of themselves and others’ laughter patterns, make artworks inspired by stand-up, sitcoms, and slapstick comedy, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed will include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological and physiological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags. Experiential, hands-on opportunities for engaging with the course will involve expert panels, improv/comedy workshops, scientific laughter labs, and an art exhibit organized around laughter. This is a complex, composite course; interviews are strongly encouraged. Same as FLMH 2162 and PSYC 2162. Also offered as First-Year Studies ARTS 1162.