Humour, Satire and Play in Researching and Teaching History
All sessions will be in room LH014, Waterside Campus, University of Northampton
Day 1: 27 June 2024
10am – 11am: Welcome and Keynote talk by Dave Cohen, Comedian, Broadcaster, BBC TV writer, Novelist, and 8 times BAFTA winner:
- ‘Make History Fun Again: How Horrible Histories Inspired a New Generation of Learner’
11.15am – 1pm: Early Historical and Enlightenment-era Humour
- Elizabeth Bull, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, ‘Laughing with our Ancestors: Humour in the Ancient World’
- Matthew McCormack, University of Northampton, ‘Stick to your Last: Shoemakers and the Georgian Satirical Print’
- Kerry Love, University of Northampton, ‘Selling Satire, The Role of Humour in Selling 18th Century Political Material Culture’
- Dennis Meyhoff Brink, University of Copenhagen, ‘Molière’s Tartuffe and the Snowball Effect of Anticlerical Satire during the European Enlightenment’
1pm – 2pm: Lunch
2pm – 3.45pm: Humour and Conflicts
- Toby Purser, University of Northampton, ‘Early English Warrior Communities: Beowulf, the Writings of Bede and other Poems and Chronicles’
- Vincent Trott, The Open University, ‘Political Satire and the Peace Movement in the United States, 1914–1917’
- Adrian Leibowitz, Independent Scholar, ‘Jester of Nazareth: The Comic Oeuvre of Palestinian Filmmaker Elia Suleiman – Humour in Dark Times’
- Eduardo Katz, University of Porto, ‘Jojo Rabbit: Humour, History, and Cinema for an Irreverent Education’
4pm – 5.45pm: Humour, Political Extremism and Challenging Racism
- Daniel Jones, University of Northampton, ‘The Dark Side of Humour: The Role of Cartoons and Satire within Far-Right Print Cultures’
- Clive Henry, University of Northampton, ‘Does Humour Belong in Fascism Studies’
- William Hatfield, University of Northampton, ‘Kid-ding Around?: Far-Right Youth Culture and Humour in the Post-war Period’
- Tara Kendall, UC Santa Barbara, ‘How do I Know what I Might Be if I Were a White Man?: The Black Comedian as Social Commentator’
5.45pm: Reception and conference meal at Waterside Bar
Day 2: 28 June 2024
10am – 11am: Welcome and Keynote by Sharon Lockyer, Director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research at Brunel University:
- ‘From “Unprecedented Times” to “Business as Usual”: Making Sense of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Humorous Crisis Narratives’
11.15am – 1pm: Autoethnography, Museums and Games
- Jill Birrell, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, ‘Humour, Satire and Difficult Histories’
- Emily Bavellas, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, ‘The Art of Comedy: Exploring the History of Humour in the Visual Arts’
- Will Garbett, University of Lancashire, ‘A “Bizarre Euphoria”? Disgust and the Press Response to the 2001 Brass Eye Special’
- James Allen, University of Northampton, ‘Boardgames, Accuracy and Pedagogy in History’
1pm – 2pm: Lunch
2pm – 3.30pm: Historical Humour and Satirical Literacy: York Research Unit for the Study of Satire
- Adam J Smith, York St John University, ‘On Teaching Eighteenth-Century Satire: Centring Satire, Intertextuality, and Ideology’
- Jo Waugh, York St John University, ‘On Teaching Nineteenth-Century Satire: Satire and Unlearning the Literature A Level’
- Robert Edgar, York St John University, ‘On Teaching Twenty-First-Century Satire in Adaptation: Killing Stalin Again’
3.30pm – 4.00pm: Roundtable Discussions, Outputs and Close
To register, please contact Dr Siobhan Hyland at Siobhan.hyland@northampton.ac.uk.