Dear Colleagues,
I'd like to draw your attention to my new book published by Bloomsbury.
A Philosophy of Comedy on Stage and Screen
As far as we know, only human beings have a sense of humour – although chimps might laugh when tickled, and dogs respond similarly in play, Seth McFarlane's fan-base is comprised exclusively of humans. Whilst animals and robots might feature as prominent characters in our favourite comic movies, shows and stand-up routines, we have no reason to suspect that their real-life brethren get the joke.
Drawing on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Shaun May attempts to address this issue – suggesting that there is something distinctive about human beings which grounds our ability to make and comprehend jokes. Guiding the reader through a range of examples, including the films of Charlie Chaplin, the stand-up of Francesca Martinez, the TV show Family Guy and Samuel Beckett's Endgame, he demonstrates that in order to get the joke you have to 'be there'.
Biography
Shaun May is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent and PI on the BA/Leverhulme funded project Comedy on the Spectrum: Exploring Humour Production in Adolescents with Autism. Prior to joining the faculty at Kent, he was an AHRC Postdoc in the Philosophy department of the University of Liverpool and he taught at the Royal College of Art and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He recently co-edited a special issue of Performance Research 'On Anthropomorphism' and his first book, Rethinking Practice as Research and the Cognitive Turn, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2015.
Hardback version available from the Bloomsbury website (link) Hardback and Kindle version available from Amazon (link)
If you could forward this on to anyone you think might be interested then that would be appreciated.
All the best,
Shaun
