Panel Proposal for the CERPE International Workshop 2026, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, https://www.hkmu.edu.hk/ss/2026-cerpe-international-workshop/
This is part of the University of Amsterdam’s Chinese Selfies in Europe project.
Laughter is a complex cultural and physical phenomenon. It can release tensions and reveal ideas or feelings that remain otherwise unspoken, whether individually – through the partial lifting of repression, as described by Freud – or collectively – through shared forms of social and folkloric laughter, as theorised by Bakhtin. Either way, laughter is profoundly shaped by cultural context. What counts as humorous, when laughter is appropriate, and who becomes its target are governed by social codes that audiences learn and recognise.
Yet humour – much like human beings – rarely remains confined to the cultural contexts in which it originates. Jokes, comedic performances, and humorous narratives circulate across languages, media, and geographical spaces. When they do, their meanings may shift in unpredictable ways. Cultural references may become opaque, stereotypes may be reinforced or transformed, and audiences may interpret the same ‘joke’ differently depending on their social and cultural position.
This panel will ask: what happens with laughter when it travels? How do humour and comedic forms change when they move across linguistic, cultural, and geographical boundaries? And how are culturally specific codes – such as forms of ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Europeanness’ embedded in humour – reconfigured when audiences, readers, or performers encounter them in new contexts? The focus will be on laughter in and between Chinese and European cultures.
Researching migratory communities and diasporas offers a unique perspective and informs us about how distance from home is affectively humourised, how leaving one political system translates into satire about state leaders, and how humanity is satirised when encountering racism in a new host society. Studying translations of humorous (literary) texts, comedic series, films, memes, etc, can furthermore enlighten us about whether, and in what way, laughter in translation can create a space of ‘cultural coevalness’ (following Chow, 2014).
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- laughter in translation
- diasporic comedy
- stand-up comedy and migration
- circulation of humour on digital platforms
- intercultural misunderstanding and laughter
- laughter as/at cultural stereotypes
- affective humour
- aesthetics of humour
Please send your proposal (250 words) and a short bio (100 words) to Linde Luijnenburg and Rui Huang by 26 March 2026.
Linde Luijnenburg 