Tag: humor
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Janet Gibson, Grinnell College – Humor and Human Behavior
On Grinnell College Week: How important is a sense of humor? Janet Gibson, professor of psychology, explores how laughing can make a big impact on your psychological wellbeing. My main focus of research is on implicit memory, the influence of past experience that facilitates or biases current performance in the absence of conscious recollection. I…
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Chris Westbury, University of Alberta – Mathematical Theory of Humor
What makes you laugh? Chris Westbury, professor in the department of psychology at the University of Alberta, explores humor and why we find weird things funny. I am a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. I am a clinically-trained research psychologist whose work focuses on understanding the cognitive structure and neurological underpinnings of…
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Catherine Le Gouis, Mount Holyoke College – The Humor of Marcel Proust
Apparently, Marcel Proust was funny. Catherine Le Gouis, French professor at Mount Holyoke College, helps us appreciate the famed writer’s comedy. Catherine Le Gouis is Professor of French at Mount Holyoke College, where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. Her area of research is French and Russian comparative literature; her current project is a biography…
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Stephanie Pietros, Mt. St. Mary College – Shakespearean Satire
Saturday Night Live premiered in 1975, but satire is hardly a new concept. Stephanie Pietros, a English professor at Mount Saint Mary College, presents a close read of Shakespeare’s Othello as contemporary theater attendees might have interpreted some inside jokes. Dr. Stephanie Pietros is Assistant Professor of English at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh,…
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Steve Gimbel featured on The Best of Our Knowledge
As always, host Bob Barrett selects an Academic Minute to air during The Best of Our Knowledge. Each week this program examines some of the issues unique to college campuses, looks at the latest research, and invites commentary from experts and administrators from all levels of education. For this week‘s edition (#1261), Bob has selected…
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Steve Gimbel, Gettysburg College – An Ethics of Joking
Have you ever been offended by a joke? Dr. Steve Gimbel, a professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College, discusses the nature of offensive jokes and why we seem to have an type of ethical understanding embedded in humor. Dr. Steve Gimbel‘s research focuses on the connection between scientific evidence and explanation, interpretations of the geometrical…
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Peter McGraw, University of Colorado – A Science of Humor
Can we accurate codify why things make us laugh? Dr. Peter McGraw of the University of Colorado Boulder draws on his work with Caleb Warren and The Humor Research Lab (HuRL) to answer the question, “What makes things humorous?” Dr. Peter McGraw is an expert in the interdisciplinary fields of judgment, emotion, and choice. He…