conferences

Mixed Bill is GO!

Comedy research, feminisms, MixedBill, Reclaiming spaces, Symposium

 

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Earlier this year, around a kitchen table, two other amazing women and myself established Mixed Bill, a comedy and gender research network. Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life (2017) writes evocatively on the significance of tables for feminist work (gaining a place at the table, turning tables, family disagreements at the dinner table) and her work continues to inspire me to create my own opportunities to progress the feminist agenda of my work. In this instance with a (to use Ahmed’s term) ‘fragile’ feminist network external to any one institution.

I had been thinking about producing an engagement event in relation to my research for a while and couldn’t think of two better partners in crime than Lisa Moore of the University of Salford and Kate Fox, stand-up poet and PhD candidate at Leeds University. Together we are a pretty formidable team and our research areas and interests fit very nicely alongside each other.  The event we have been planning is shaping up to be the mother of all symposia. It has been quite tricky to plan due to the quality and range of abstracts we received – we had to make some ruthless decisions as every single abstract outlined a paper that we would have loved to have seen.

Last week we sat down and thrashed it out and have programmed an event that feels in many ways quite revolutionary. We aren’t running concurrent papers so everyone’s voice can be heard by all attendees. There is nothing more frustrating than having to pick between attending one presentation when another, just as relevant, is taking place down the hall – although maybe being the presenter of a paper to a split audience is a contender for the crown? The opportunity for those researching gender and comedy, a growing field, to engage and be challenged by so many different approaches that speak directly to their area is exciting too – as often gender and comedy is ring-fenced in a panel of its own within larger discussions of comedy (those researching gender and comedy often find themselves thrown together irrespective of the way their paper may be a better fit with, say, panels on political satire or musical comedy). As the fundamental premise of our event is women and comedy and the opportunities women have to represent themselves through comedy, the programmed panels give a chance to address this from multiple perspectives, with multiple examples from different countries, eras and approaches.

Our event will also include several non-traditional presentations/ performances and interventions into the area to give attendees the chance to engage with (and learn from) the ideas and opinions of those who work within comedy and performance. We are pushing very hard to ensure our event is inclusive to all and are discussing various approaches we can take to try to impact on the diversity of our field. We all feel strongly that we have to go beyond just saying we want to be diverse in our programming and attendance make-up to find active and practical ways of addressing this.

It is very exciting to be setting off on this new adventure with Mixed Bill, as producing events and inspiring engagement as part of a team is where I think I work best. Between us we have lots of ideas about where to explore next and I also can’t wait to meet all the amazing people who will be joining us at the start of this exciting new phase for gender and comedy research in October.

ONWARDS.

More on Mixed Bill and our first event here.

 

 

Mock The Weak Conference

Comedy research, feminisms, self-deprecation

Back in September I had the chance to present a small (but significant) aspect of my research at the Mock The Weak conference at the University of Teesside. The conference organisers Sarah Illot and Helen Davies had brought together a variety of researchers, academics and industry professionals to discuss comedy and the politics of representation. It was a great opportunity for me to explore some of the themes I am engaging with in one of my chapters – the use of self-deprecation and, conversely, body positivity in stand-up comedy by female performers.

The paper I presented  was called Positives and Negatives: Reclaiming the Female Body and Self-Deprecation in Stand-up Comedy (snappy title eh). Here’s a shot of my PowerPoint up and ready to go (with a cameo from Rosie White who chaired the panel).

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The audience offered some great points for further consideration and asked some interesting questions. Many hadn’t seen the work of the comedian I used as my key example (Luisa Omielan) and so the decision to play a short clip of her work was definitely the right way to go.

One of the really useful things about the conference was that it kicked off with a workshop for early career researchers in publishing. Having just (I mean literally just  – as in the day before going to the conference) finished making amendments to an article following on from peer review, it felt timely to reflect on the challenges this throws up for PhD researchers. It was exactly the kind of workshop you wish you had attended before you started your PhD. In the session we had the opportunity to hear about the experiences of Dr Rosie White, who was awarded her Doctorate in the late 90s, and early career researcher Megan Sormus, and talk through the process from submission to publication. All the PhD candidates in the room discussed the difficulty of getting our heads round the REF (Research Excellence Framework) and what, if anything, this meant in terms of the work we would hopefully go on to publish whilst studying. The ever-present pressure to spin all the different plates (getting the research written, gaining teaching experience, getting articles published) simultaneously was also explored. I definitely left the room feeling more aware of what I should be focusing on and some of the key things I need to consider the next time I submit work for publication (it seems very much like I lucked out – approaching a journal cold and their responding swiftly and positively). There’s a great summary of advice form the workshop here.

The conference included a broad range of topics and approaches (Rob Hawkes on Stewart Lee and trust, Kate Fox on Northernness and class in comedy, were just a few of the highlights) as well as illuminating keynotes from Anshuman Mondal and Sharon Lockyer.

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The two days concluded with a panel discussion  which gave a really eye-opening account of the complex issues involved in comedy and representation, and featured contributions from a range of perspectives, including comedian Kate Smurthwaite, Lynne Parker from Funny Women (both of whom  I have interviewed as part of my research), trans activist and comedian Clare Parker, comedy writer and director Matthew Greenhough and Akua Gymafi founder of the British Black List, as well as the keynote speakers and conference organisers.

The conference blog is still active and includes interviews with several of the presenters for the event. Check it out here.

 

 

Processing

Comedians, Comedy research, Gender
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Some Whitstable sunshine

This week I went along to the Comedy and Critical Thought: Laughter As Resistance? Conference. The event was a collaboration between the University of Kent’s Centre for Critical Thought, Centre for Comic and Popular Performance and the Aesthetics Research Centre. I also snuck a day off from marking on the Bank Holiday Monday and ambled about on a beach (see image above) – huge win for me.

One of the major draws of a conference like this is the chance to explore the diversity of approaches taken to humour and engage with people from such a wide range of disciplines. I expected many of the papers to be way out of my comfort zone but actually that was part of the fun. A reminder of just how much there is out there that you know nothing about is liberating – I am consciously incompetent of even more things than before.

Day one kicked off with James Williams discussing a Deleuzian critique of existing theories of humour (incl. Critchley and Freud). Although this felt a bit less like being thrown in at the deep end and more pushed into the shark tank at an aquarium, this presentation has enabled me to find a more definite articulation of one of the key aspects of my methodology. Although I am sure Williams’ presentation, which was discussing ‘Process Philosophy – How does critique operate when everything is connected?’ had much greater significance for others in attendance, I found what I did grasp illuminating and useful.

It reinforced for me why I have always been frustrated by a content analysis approach to comedy research. My decision to go beyond straightforward content analysis in my own methodology is precisely because by objectifying the humour (making it fixed and reducing it to words so it can be analysed) you remove the context, the before and after, and attempting to remove it from this context is unhelpful and naïve. As Williams put it (according to my hastily scribbled notes) we should be considering the multiplicity of these disruptive events of humour, getting beyond the binary found in the likes of Critchley and Freud (where only two different series are at play, the ‘norm’ and the ‘disruptive’, in terms of incongruity).

So basically the first keynote had me questioning my own existence. I can actually still feel my brain thinking. I’m not a fixed thing, I am a process and I am becoming. Mind blown.

Other highlights included Dr Shaun May’s discussion of the neurodiveristy movement’s use of humour in highlighting the flaws in neurotypical pathologising of autism and Asperger’s, and Dr Rosie White’s paper on the work of Kathy Burke in queering understandings of femininity. Having been inspired by Rosie’s work on Lizzie and Sarah (a TV comedy created by Jessica Hynes and Julia Davis) and her arguments about the presentation of feminist messages within it, it was great to see her present in person. All attendees also got the chance to have a peek through the current exhibition of comic art as part of the Uni’s Stand-Up Comedy Archive.

Another key aspect of attending this event was the opportunity to meet with other comedy researchers. I was lucky enough to be able to spend time talking through things with Kate Fox (based at University of Leeds) whose own practice-based research is exploring a similar theme to my own (decidedly non-practice-based) research. The opportunity to talk to other comedy researchers is invaluable. The chance to be challenged and reassured is helpful when, as a PhD student, you spend so much time fighting the fight solo. Kate is also conducting qualitative interviews and so discussing the complexities of the ethical aspects of this, and how this will fit alongside the analysis we are both conducting, made me feel a million times more energised for what is left to achieve.

So, all in all, a really engaging and worthwhile event for me. One that I am still processing.