Dear friends and colleagues,
We are delighted to launch the Humour and Religion Network aiming to bring together and connect both scholars and practitioners who work at the intersections of humour and religion.
This is a niche but growing area of research and practice exploring in different ways the multifaceted links between humour and religion. Here are a few examples:
- academic conferences, such as “Humour in the Beginning” at Radboud University, March 2019
- humour and religion sessions at the conferences of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR), July 2017 and the International Society for Humour Studies (ISHS), June 2018;
- publications and books; public interviews and articles on popular platforms like Huffpost.com; and
- a growing number of comedy shows and other humour productions where religion is also featured.
The Humour and Religion Network aims to foster the exchange of ideas and forge interdisciplinary and international collaborations between humanities researchers and social scientists; interfaith leaders and social action stakeholders; as well as comedians and humourists, who all share a common interest in cross-cutting issues at the intersections of humour, satire and comedy, with religion, faith and belief. Some of the themes that may be of particular interest to the members of this Network include:
- – Humour about religion in the context of blasphemy/free speech
- – Humour and religion in popular culture
- – Laughter and interfaith engagement
- – Humour traditions in different religions
- – Practices and lineages of religious humour, past and present
- – Scriptural humour
- – Philosophies and theories of religious humour
- – Social science approaches to humour and religion
As part of this initiative, we are also aiming to eventually build a public archive of works by scholars who have published on humour and religion in the last 15-20 years. Our goal is to create a comprehensive, organised and searchable open archive of the study of humour and religion, which we hope will become a port of call for anyone interested in past and ongoing research projects and practical work at the intersections of humour and religion. It will be an ongoing work-in-progress.
The Network will further serve as a portal for discussion and information exchange about humour and religion, including calls for papers and upcoming conferences publications, public events, comedy work and the like.
To become a member (recommended!) you can simply register with Yahoo Groups and ask to join the Network by going to: https://groups.yahoo.com/humour-religion
In case you only want to receive e-mails from group members, you can send an e-mail from your personal account to: humour-religion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and confirm the electronic response.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Roald Dijkstra, Ph.D.
Lina Molokotos-Liederman, Ph.D.
Bernard Schweizer, PhD