ANTH 353

Credit: 3 hours.

Humor is an essential element of human life, yet it has proven an intractable object of study. Though scholars have long tried to distill "humor" to a static, universal formula, the anthropological approach to humor emphasizes that it is a culture- and context-specific phenomenon that must be studied in action. In this course we will study a wide range of scholarly perspectives on humor, including psychoanalysis, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, as we consider the social and communicative dimensions of joking and laughter.

Prerequisite: ANTH 104 or ANTH 270 are strongly recommended.