Humor Societies and Conferences

This page contains information on academic humor organizationsand conferences.

Organizations

The International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS)
The purpose of this society is to promote, stimulate and encourage the interdisciplinary study of humor.

President (2008-2009): Christie Davies

Immediate Past President (2007-2008): Rod Martin

Executive board:

• Martin Lampert (-2009) Holy Names University
• Lorene Birden (-2009) University of Bourgogne, France

Nominating committee:

Rod Martin (Chair) University of Western Ontario, Canada; Margaret Mathias, Salve Regina University, Canada; Masumi Muramatsu, Columbia University, Tokyo, Japan; Alleen Pace Nilsen, Arizona State University

Executive Secretary: Martin Lampert

Holy Names University
Oakland, CA 94619, USA
Tel:
Email: ishs–at–hnu.edu.

For membership and latest news see the ISHS-Website

ISHS-constitution: see pages 431-440 of HUMOR (1996),Vol 9, 3-4, or download as pdf here

Related academic societies

• The Association for the Study of Play - TASP (Multidisciplinary organization dedicatedto promoting the study of play)
• International Association of Empirical Aesthetics - IAEA
• International Society for Research on Emotion - ISRE

Our sister society - ISHS

Other academic humor societies

• The Australasian Humour Studies Network (AHSN) at University of Sydney, Australia (maintained by Dr. Jessica Milner Davis). The AHSN focuses upon emerging research into humour and laughter and promotes links between humour scholars in different academic departments and geographical locations across Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

• The American Humor Studies Association- The purpose of the Association is to foster and to promote study, criticism, andresearch in American humor in all its varied aspects.

• Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH)

• Japan Humor and Laughter Society (in Japanese)

• Nordic Humor Research Network
  maintained by Prof. Birgit Hertzberg Kaare

• Dansk Center for Humorforskning (in Danish). Describes a Scandianvian network of humor researcher. Webmaster: Martin Führ

• Italian Humor Website "Centro di Ricerca sull'Umorismo" (in Italian) by Giovannantonio Forabosco.

• CORHUM - Association française pour le développement des recherches sur le Comique, le Rire et l'Humour, Paris, France.

• The International Society for Luso-Hispanic Humor Studies (link extinct) Ursinus College Collegeville, PA: Dedicated to promote the study and appreciation of humor wherever Spanish and Portuguese are spoken

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Conferences

ISHS-Conferences

For past ISHS-Conferences see Don Nilsen's ISHS Historian Page.

Pre-ISHS Humor Conferences

International Conferences

• 1976 in Cardiff, Wales, UK (Antony Chapman and Hugh Foot, 1976)
• 1979 in Los Angeles, CA, USA (Harvey Mindess & Joy Turek, 1979)
• 1982 in Washington D.C., USA (Rufus Browning & Larry Mintz, 1982)
• 1984 in Tel Aviv, Israel (Avner Ziv, 1984)
• 1985 in Cork, Ireland (Desmond MacHale, 1985)

The WHIM Tradition

Between 1982 and 1988 there were six international conferences held at
Arizona State University with between 100 and 300 presentations being
made at each of the conferences. After each conference a book of
"Concretes" was published, ranging from 287 to 412 pages per book.
The organization was the World Humor and Irony Membership (WHIM),
and the proceedings were named the World Humor and Irony Membership
Serial Yearbook (WHIMSY). Don and Alleen Nilsen were co-chairs of
WHIM 1-6 (1982-1987).

The subjects of the various conferences were as follows:

• 1982: The Language of Humor; the Humor of Language
• 1983: Humor and Metaphoor
• 1984: Contemporary Humor
• 1985: Humor Across the Disciplines
• 1986: American Humor
• 1987: International Humor

Victor Raskin chaired the last WHIM conference in 1988 (see above).

Other conferences

• New York (1984)
• Paris, France (Anne-Marie Laurian), 1985
• World Humor Conference in Hyderabad, India (Narendra Luther), 1985

For a documentation of the conferences click here.

Summer Schools

The International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications (ISS)

• 1 st ISS, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK (June 25 - 30, 2001)
• 2 nd ISS, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK (June 24 -29, 2002)
• 3 rd ISS, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (Sept. 15-20, 2003)
• 4 th ISS at University of Wolverhampton, UK (Sept. 6-11, 2004)
• 5 th ISS at University of Tübingen, Germany (July 25 - 30, 2005)
• 6 th ISS at University of Fribourg, Switzerland (July 10 - 15, 2006 )
• 7 th ISS at University of Aberdeen, UK (July 9 - 14, 2007)
• 8 th ISS at Dunarea de Jos University, Galati, Romania (June 23 - 28, 2008)
• 9 th ISS at University of Granada, Granada, Spain (June 29 - July 4, 2009)
• 10 th ISS at University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland (July 5 - 10, 2010)

Other conferences and workshops:

Computational Humor

• The April Fool's day Workshop on computational humour, April 15-16, 2002, ITC-irst, Trento, ITALY.
• International Workshop on Computational Humor, Automatic Interpretation and Generation of Verbal Humor, September, 1996 University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
• Symposium on AI and Creative Language: Stories and Humour (convener: Kim Binsted) at the AISB'99 (Edinburgh in April 1999). Proceedings (pdf)

Humor in Therapy

• Humor in der Therapie (Annual conference on humor in therapy and other applied settings), Messe Basel, Switzerland.
  • 1996 - 2000: Five conferences on "Humor in Therapy"
• Aroser Kongress über die Heilkraft von Lachen und Humor in Medizin und Psychotherapie (annual conference on humor in medicine and psychotherapy)
  • 2. Kongress im Arosa, Switzerland, March 1998.
• Humor gewinnt: Humor Bad Zurzach September 22-24, 2006 - additional information here
• Humor und Heiterkeit im Alter. 12. Arbeitstagung für Psychotherapie im Alter. Bonn-Bad Godesberg. 22.-24. Juni 2000

Other...

• Traduire le Rire/The Anatomy of Laughter, 12th - 15th September 2001, St Hugh's College, Oxford
• Kassel Humor Colloquium (Kasseler Komik-Kolloquium)
• Conference on "Parody, Satire, Irony, Laughter, and the Grotesque: Humour in Latin American, Peninsular, Luso-Brazilian, and Chicano Literatures" sponsored by the Department of Languages and Literatures at Arizona State University, October 7-9, 1999 (Organizers: Alberto Acereda, Isabel Diaz, Maria Martell, or Alvaro Vergara-Mery)
• Conferences of the International Society for Luso-Hispanic Humor Studies (link extinct)