Anthropology 223
The World At Play
Spring 2012
TTH 2:00-3:20 PM
MERR 315
Professor Menair
email: smenair@ amherst.edu
office: 203B Morgan Hall
hours: T 3:30-5:00 pm
Course Description:
Conventionally, play and joking are treated lightly since acts performed in fun seem to have a
transparently light purpose—enjoyment. Yet what we value as enjoyment, what makes us smile,
chuckle, or laugh out loud, is deeply revealing of our values. In this course, we will explore how
joking refracts social values and consider play as a prism that illuminates cultural patterns and
principles of social organization. Our readings will consider the social and interpretive functions
of play and joking and introduce linguistic analyses of joking and wordplay, with a focus on the
special framing of jokes. Through examination of acts of play in our own and other cultures, we
will shine a light on how others make sense of the world and consider the possibilities of play to
both create and hinder social change.
Course Assignments:
Class Participation 15%
All students are expected to come prepared to each class, which means having read the
assigned readings for the day AND engaging in that day’s discussion. In addition to evaluating
you on the quality (not quantity) of your contributions to class discussion, I will be giving periodic
quizzes to assess if you are keeping up with the reading.
Exams 50%
The midterm and the final exam, which will be open-book, take-home exams, will each
constitute another quarter of your grade. The exams are designed to help you make
connections between the readings over the course of the term, and to reward you for your
detailed attention both to the texts and to your colleagues' contributions. Exams dates are
scheduled as listed below.
Humor Analysis Paper 35%
Outside of the exams and your class participation, your other major responsibility is a 6-8 page
paper that analyzes some aspect of humor or play in American culture. This assignment gives
you the chance to be analysts of play in your own culture. You may work individually or in
groups of up to three persons. A one-page proposal is due on February 7th, an annotated
bibliography is due on March 6th, and your paper is due on April 10th.
Attendance Policy:
Let me know as soon as possible if you must miss class for illness or other reasons. If you are
absent from class you should get lecture notes from a classmate for the missed class. After your
second absence, I will deduct 2 points from you final grade for each subsequent class that you
miss.
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Other Course Policies:
Class etiquette: Arrive on time to class. Turn off any gadget that could disrupt the class. Do not
talk on the phone or text during class. Listen to and interact with other students (and me!)
respectfully. If you have to leave class early, please do so quietly.
Laptops: To facilitate better discussions, I ask that you leave them at home or in your bag and
do not use during our class sessions.
Email: I will respond to email promptly but not instantly. Do not expect an immediate response
to your email in the wee hours of the night or directly before class. Email is all well and good,
but I do encourage you to come and see me in my office either on Mondays, or by making an
appointment if that time does not work for you.
Academic Honesty: Do not cheat or plagiarize. All work must be your own. On the take-home
exams, these are open-book, open note exams, as stated above. However, you may not
collaborate or work together on the exams, and you definitely should not crib your essays or
answers from internet sources such as Wikipedia, which is often wrong!
GRADING
Class Participation & Reading Quizzes:
Midterm Exam:
Due 3/27
Final Exam:
Due 5/10
Humor Analysis Paper
Due 4/10
Humor Analysis Bibliography
Due 3/6
Humor Analysis Proposal
Due 2/7
15%
25%
25%
20%
10%
5%
READINGS
All materials can be found on the course website with the exception of the one book we will be
reading, Portraits of the Whiteman, which is available at the bookstore.
The Course Schedule
I reserve the right to make changes to this schedule, and the syllabus more generally, should
unforeseen circumstances arise.
I. INTRODUCTION
1/23 Introduction
1/26 Friend, Tad. “What’s So Funny? A scientific attempt to discover why we laugh.” New
Yorker 11/11/2002.
II. PLAY AS PRISM—social and interpretive meanings in joking
1/31 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952 “On Joking Relationships,” In Structure and Function in
Primitive Society. 90-104.
2/2 Douglas, Mary. 1968. “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception”
Man 3(3): 361-376.
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2/7 Clifford Geertz. 1979. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” In The Interpretation of
Culture. 412-455.
2/7 Choose Topics for Humor Analysis Assignments, One Page Proposal
Due in Class
2/9 Sherzer, Joel. 1993 “On Puns, Comebacks, Verbal Dueling, and Play Languages: Speech
Play in Balinese Verbal Life.” Language in Society 2(2): 217-233.
2/14, 2/16 Basso, Keith. 1979. Portraits of the Whiteman: linguistic play and cultural symbols
among the Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bookstore
2/21 Counts, David & Dorothy Counts. 1992. “Exaggeration and Reversal: Clowning Among the
Lusi Kaliai,” in Clowning as Critical Practice. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 88-103.
2/23 Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator (Shown In Class)
III. JOKES ABOUT WOMEN, JOKES BY WOMEN
2/28 Freud, Sigmund. 1960. “The Purpose of Jokes” Chapter 3 in Jokes and their Relation to
the Unconscious. New York: Norton. 106-138.
3/1 Seizer, Susan. 1997. “Jokes, gender and discursive distance on the Tamil popular stage”
American Ethnologist 24(1): 62-90.
3/6 Annotated Bibliography Due In Class
3/6 Mitchell, Carol. 1977. “The Sexual Perspective in the Appreciation and Interpretation of
Joke.” Western Folklore 36(4): 303:329.
3/8 Kulick, Don. 2010. “Humorless Lesbians.” In Femininity, Feminism and Gendered
Discourse. Janet Holmes & Meredith Marra, Eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pp. 59-82.
3/13 Ervin-Tripp, Susan & Martha Lampert. 2006. “Risky laughter: Teasing and self-directed
joking among male and female friends.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 51-72.
3/15 Yoshida, Mitsuhiro. 2001. “Joking, Gender, Power, and Professionalism Among Japanese
Inn Workers.” Ethnology 40(4): 361-369.
3/15 Midterm Handed Out
IV. WORDPLAY
3/27 Midterm Due in Class
3/27 Siegel, Jeff. 1995. “How to Get a Laugh in Fijian: Code-switching and Humor” in Language
in Society, 24(1): 95-110.
3/29 Lecture Susan Seizer Smith College (Extra Credit Opportunity!)
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4/3 Bateson, Gregory. 1972. “A Theory of Play and Fantasy” in Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
New York: Ballantine Books. 177-193.
4/5 Labov, William. 1972. “Rules for Ritual Insults” Chapter 8 in Language in the Inner City;
Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 307353.
4/10 Humor Analysis Paper Due
4/10 Goffman, Erving. 1974. “Keys and Keying” Chapter 3 in Frame Analysis. Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press. 40-82.
V. THAT’S NOT FUNNY—on the social uses of derogatory jokes
4/12 Billig, Michael. 2001. “Humor and hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Klu Klux Klan.”
Discourse and Society 12(3): 267-289.
4/17 Hill, Jane. 1993. “Hasta La Vista, Baby.” Critique of Anthropology. 13(2): 145-176.
4/19, 4/24 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1984. Introduction to Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press. 1-53.
4/26 Limon, Jose. 1996. “Carnes, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque” in The Matrix of Language.
Donald Brenneis & Ronald McCauley, Eds. Westview Press. Pp. 182-203.
5/1 Norman, Karin. 1994. “The Ironic Body.” Ethnos. 59(3-4): 187-211.
5/3 Wrap up
5/3 Final Exam Handed Out
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