Explorations in American Humor

Series Editor:
Judith Yaross Lee, Ohio University

People everywhere enjoy a good laugh, but the same comic tactics and targets do not amuse everyone in all places and times. Books in the Explorations in American Humor series investigate how the comic practices of the United States reflect and inform many strands of American culture, present and past. The series thus engages American humor’s transnational sources and influences, as well as their local and regional counterparts, across a full range of genres and media:

• jokes and other interpersonal modes
• public clowning and satiractivism
• stage, film, radio, television, and stand-up comedy
• gag, narrative, editorial, and animated cartoons
• prose and verse humor in periodicals and books
• memes and other offerings in new digital media

Volumes in the series probe the aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural significance of American comic creativity through interdisciplinary research, historical and critical analysis (including investigation of economic, technical, and other factors shaping production, circulation, and reception), and interpretation of contexts such as race, class, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, ideology, and region. Books are published in English, but American materials examined may come from any languages.

Authors should address inquiries and proposals for monographs and edited collections to series editor Judith Yaross Lee, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Communication Studies, Ohio University, at leej@ohio.edu, or LSU Press senior acquisitions editor James Long at jlong12@lsu.edu. Proposals (PDF preferred) should include a cover letter, working title, table of contents, brief differentiation from competing titles, and sample chapters, along with rough total word count (with notes and bibliography), information on any proposed art, and a résumé or CV.

Editorial Advisory Board

Regina Barreca
University of Connecticut

Darryl Dickson-Carr
Southern Methodist University

David Gillota
University of Wisconsin, Platteville

Karen L. Green
Columbia University

Bambi Haggins
University of California, Irvine

Ethan Thompson
Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi