How Many Sociologists Does It Take To Change a Lightbulb: Studying Humor in Social Life

3 units

What makes things funny? What roles does humor play in society? How is humor used by various groups and to what ends? What are the relationships between humor, identity, and inequality? In this course, we will investigate humor and its place in social life from a sociological perspective. We will read classic and contemporary theorists on what people find funny while considering the positive and negative effects of humor in the contemporary world.