DFG Research Network: Comedy and Disability

Disability tends to be perceived as a serious matter across cultures, but humorous portrayals of people with disabilities have always existed. Nevertheless, there has been almost no theoretically and methodologically well-founded examination on the subject of ‘comedy and disability’, neither in cultural or media studies nor in social and educational sciences.

There is not only a lack of comprehensive theories, but also a lack of surveys and analyses of specific fictional and non-fictional texts. In light of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in the context of inclusion, the question of the conditions under which comic portrayals of disability promote positive images of people with disabilities is more relevant than ever before. If one sees comedy and the laughter associated with it as a human reaction to impairments of possibilities for action and to violations of norms, the ambivalent potential of comedy for the topic of disability becomes immediately clear: the community can laugh because of or despite the disability, about the people affected or with them. The research network aims to explore this topic from the perspective of different disciplines. (DFG project number: 534997547)

First conference from 15 to 17 May 2024 at the University of Passau
Follow-up report

Conference poster / Conference programme / Reader for the conference

Members of the network:

Projektleitung an der Universität Passau	Prof. Dr. Susanne Hartwig (Lehrstuhl für Romanische Literaturen und Kulturen)
Laufzeit	01.05.2024 - 30.04.2027
Mittelgeber	DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft