Humor and Morality

Catalog description

This course is about the surprisingly intricate relationship between humor and morality. We will investigate several theories of humor (theories of what makes things funny), we then turn our attention to what the general relation between humor and morality might be: does immorality in a joke or wisecrack eliminate its funniness, dampen its funniness, have no effect on its funniness, or increase its funniness? Then the focus will turn to specific types of morally troublesome humor, including racist and sexist jokes, stereotype-exploitation more generally, mockery, jokes about disability and assault, and punching up and down. The course will conclude by investigating what makes for a good or bad sense of humor, as well as the possible absurdity of life and how that might be funny.