Humor, Psyche, and Society: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis

Arthur Asa Berger, San Francisco State University

May 2020 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-808-3
Availability: In stock
140pp. ¦ $42 £32 €36

It is the age-old saying that “laughter is the best medicine”. Scientific research has substantiated the claim made by this proverb by verifying the positive effects it has on both our mind and body, but what is it about a good joke, comic, or sitcom that makes us laugh? Humor, Psyche and Society is a compilation of Berger’s previously published articles and new chapters on the nature of humour, its importance for our psyches, and its social and political significance. Written in an accessible style, it uses semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, sociological theory, as well as other theories of humour to explore the multifaceted nature of humour, various styles of jokes and sitcoms. Using Berger’s typology of forty-five techniques found in all forms of humour, developed to explain what makes us laugh, this book analyses a variety of humorous texts. Balancing theory, entertaining jokes and other humorous texts, as well as the author’s illustrations, the chapters in this book delve into a diverse range of topics such as humour and the creative process, humour and health, and visual humour; along with an examination of the sitcoms Frasier and Cheers; and finally, the exploration of jokes including Jewish jokes, and jokes on Russia and Communism, and Trump. This book will be of particular interest to university students studying courses in humour, comedy, popular culture, applied semiotics, American politics and culture, and cultural studies. Due to the accessible nature of this book, the general public may find it to be both a fascinating and entertaining read.

Roots and Routes: Poetics at New College of California

Edited by Patrick James Dunagan et al.

May 2020 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-800-7
Availability: In stock
458pp. ¦ $67 £51 €57

'Roots and Routes' gathers essays, talks, interviews, statements, notes, and other prose writings by poets who studied and/or taught at the New College of California’s Masters in Poetics program over the course of its nearly 30-year existence. The collection evokes a much-needed anti-hierarchical, even anarchic, pedagogy in poetry, poetics, and the literary arts, and is part of a general reevaluation of standard higher education models on Creative Writing. As such it will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars interested in America’s recent literary history, as well as to poets outside the academy and the general reader interested in US poetry and poetics.

No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media

Luiz Valério P. Trindade, University of Southampton, UK

July 2020 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-796-3
Availability: In stock
230pp. ¦ $59 £44 €50

‘No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media’ examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of colonial-like racist discourses fostered against upwardly-mobile black women through disparagement humour on social media platforms, adopting a fresh and innovative perspective. In this book, Luiz Valério P. Trindade explores the idea that disparagement humour might not be as exempt of social impact as the jokers might believe, and that, in fact, this kind of humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society. The author argues that these ideologies establish and naturalise superior social positions and symbolic privileges to whites while undermining and delegitimising black women’s upward social mobility. Social media platforms enable the proponents of these beliefs not only to engage in the practice of online hate speech but also to attract a considerable number of like-minded people, creating a long-lasting echo chamber effect in the cyberspace. This way, they manage to amplify the reach and reverberation of their racist discourses in the online environment in ways not commonly seen in Brazilian offline social contexts. This monograph is of great interest and relevance to students, scholars, and researchers across a variety of disciplines, most notably Critical Race Studies, Media Communication Studies and Critical Humour Studies, and also academics in other areas such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies.

Antigone Uninterrupted

Antigone's Biographical Tale of Learning from Tragic Counsel

Wendy Bustamante

April 2020 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-760-4
Availability: In stock
164pp. ¦ $45 £33 €38

This book argues that while current scholarship on Antigone tends to celebrate work that takes Antigone out of her classical roots and puts her into contemporary frameworks, we do not need to place her in a new context and setting to appreciate what her insights offer. We can simply listen to her whole story and learn from what she learns from her father, Oedipus. While other works boldly claim to be progressively moving beyond the scope of tragic themes of mortality, Antigone Uninterrupted demonstrates that reading the Theban Plays in the order of Antigone’s biography (so to speak) expands our understanding of what Antigone could tell us about contemporary issues. This demonstration involves Hegel’s discussion of Antigone in his Phenomenology of Spirit, responses to Hegel on this point, and the author’s assessment that Antigone makes arguments in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus that ought to be illuminated in contemporary scholarship. This book examines the three Theban Plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) in the order by which Antigone’s story is a continuous development of character and age, a unique approach for reasons the author identifies, but one she argues would be beneficial to future scholarship. Providing illuminating readings of both Sophocles’ tragedies and some key modern interpretations of the plays, this book holds broad appeal for those interested in subjects such as political science, gender theory, queer theory, literary criticism, theology, and sociology, to name a few.

Documentary as Autoethnography: A Case Study Based on the Changing Surnames of Women

Hande Çayır, İstanbul Yeni Yüzyıl Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey

April 2020 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-759-8
Availability: In stock
116pp. ¦ $39 £29 €33

In a system where my identity, that is to say, my surname, was taken from me when I got married, an act supported by both the state and families, I simply became a wife. When I refused both that stereotype and the marital surname, I became curious about other women’s decisions. I made a politically-grounded documentary promoting individual power and shared it via old and new media. The seventeen-minute documentary Yok Anasının Soyadı (Mrs. His Name, 2012), a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context, had an impact on the community and created a collaborative meaning. My filmmaking experience spread the seeds, gave birth to this book, created a researcher—me, in this case—and as such, ‘theory in practice’ and ‘practice in theory’ go hand-in-hand. Women in Turkey are legally required to change their surnames when they marry and divorce. If they want to continue using their ex-husband’s surname after the divorce, they must seek permission from both him and the state. Has this unfair policy affected women financially? Has the forced surname change been a barrier for women’s careers? What about the protection of equal legal, social and economic rights? Autoethnographic researchers analyse their subjectivity and life experiences, in which they treat the self as ‘other’. This examination of social-cultural structures also calls attention to the issues of power. The interdisciplinary nature of this enquiry highlights the crucial human rights debate of the link between surnames and identity, and also focuses on the feminist maxim ‘the personal is political’. In short, the private inevitably became public in a process that bridged the autobiographical, personal, cultural, social and political. I believe that eventually—through this process—my story became (y)ours.