CFP – “Laughter is the Best Medicine? Visual Histories of Humour and HealthCo-editors Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow, and Laura Cowley are pleased to announce a call for chapter abstracts for a new edited volume on the intersection of visual culture, medicine, and humour. The use of humour within military medical contexts is of particular interest. The CFP can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17a7WiOc4JfNKXmsNk9YivaVaaZyQcIpjvI_sV3Si4Uk/editThis volume examines what role visual humour has had and continues to play in healing and healthcare, as well as in experiences of illness, injury, and death. We are interested in examining how medically adjacent art communicates a particularly embodied and abiding form of humour. Acknowledging the capacity of humour to reflect and shape the power dynamics of medical systems, this collection of essays is interested in how, historically, visual humour has vacillated between degradation and empowerment. This edited volume aims to enrich interdisciplinary approaches to the medical humanities, humour studies, and visual culture and art history. Research at this intersection has the ability to challenge misconceptions about the everyday role of humour in affecting experiences of illness, disability, injury, healthcare, and death. Proposals on topics from any period are invited; we hope that this encourages wide engagement with the tropes and themes that lie at the intersection of humour, art, and medicine. We also encourage creative and comedic submissions (visual or otherwise) which challenge critical perspectives on visual histories of humour and health.We recently presented our research on this topic at a Confabulations event; you can find the information for this panel, and watch a recording of the papers, here: https://confabulationsdotorg.wordpress.com/programme-spring-2022/pathologies-punchlines-power/Abstracts are due to the co-editors by 10 December 2022.Please do not hesitate to get in touch with the co-editors if you have any questions. You can reach us at cslobog1@jh.edu, ks596@exeter.ac.uk, and lauracowleyworks@gmail.com.
