History of modern laughter (19th – 21st centuries): comic traditions and multimedia culture

The project proposes an international, multi-century, and multi-media history of modern laughter that highlights both the phenomena of persistence and reuse of cultural heritages and the mechanisms of hybridization and cultural recycling – notably between three centers of western laughter constituting the English, French, and North American traditions. The team accepts that, since the dawn of the media era in the 19th century, laugher, in all its forms, had become an essential component of contemporary societies and has not ceased to adapt to the technical and aesthetic evolutions of art and culture.

Besides the creation of a bibliographic, documentary, and iconographic database in the wake of the Franco-Quebec research project Medias 19, the current venture is bolstered by seminars, colloquia, and workshops. It will culminate in publications and, in 2018, the Library of Contemporary International Documentation (BDIC)’s exhibition, “History’s laughter and violence,”  in its space at the Army Museum.

Project managers

Alain VAILLANT , Director of the Centre des Sciences des Littératures en langue Française (CSLF)   , Université Paris Nanterre

Ségolène LE MEN , HAR

Internal cluster partners

• History of Arts and Representations (HAR) - EA 4414
• La contemporaine | library, archives, museum of contemporary societies
• French National Library (BnF)

Associated partners

Laboratory Representing, Inventing the Reality of Romanticism at the Dawn of the 21st century (RIRRA 21, Montpellier 3)
http://rirra21.upv.univ-montp3.fr/

Le Centre des sciences des littératures en langue française (CSLF, EA 1038)
https://cslf.u-paris10.fr/

Pléiade Team (Paris 13)
https://pleiade.univ-paris13.fr/

University of Naples Federico II, Italy
http://www.unina.it/

Laval University, Quebec
https://www.ulaval.ca/

Mora Institute, Mexico
http://www.institutomora.edu.mx/

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany
http://www.ku-eichstaett.de/

Félicien Rops Museum, Namur, Belgium
http://www.museerops.be/

Duration