Event’s a funny story
Scholars look into humour
EXPLORING the motivations of mirth, love of laughter and how humour travels will be the name of the game for 40 scholars who have converged on Cairns for the 24th Australasian Humour Studies Network conference.
The three-day conference, hosted by CQUni’s Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, will run until tomorrow afternoon.
Topics covered will range from Chinese sitcoms, Iranian irony and Japanese puns to Australian sports satire, standup comedy, the culture of tickling and tall tales of travel.
Having attended the conference for the past seven years, tourism lecturer and conference co-convener Dr Anja Pabel said it was the first time it had been held in Queensland.
“The event will address how humour travels between times or places, genres or forms, from creator to recipient, or from one hearer to another, as well as humour about travel, including tourism experiences and exotic locations,” she said.
“Humour scholars are very hard to find so the few that we have coming they are quite heavyweight.
“They are scholars and aca- demics from all sorts of disciplines. This year in particular we wanted to invite a lot of scholars looking into stand-up comedy and performance, teaching us how to be funnier.”
Dr Pabel said the conference had attracted several multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, including New Zealand, Poland, Iran, Singapore, the US, Japan and Estonia.
Keynote speaker, Professor of Tourism Philip Pearce from James Cook University Townsville, said he would focus on educating the schol- ars on how to add humour and entertainment to their travel stories to avoid becoming a “travel bore”.