Like other studies in literacy (media, social, visual, etc.), we understand comic literacies as culturally and socially situated discourses and practices that produce, process, transform and contest meaning in a variety of different comedic contexts. In this sense, comic literacies can be understood as shared yet unevenly distributed repertoires of knowledge that allow performers and audiences to perceive and mobilise something as comic in historically specific ways. Existing norms and hierarchies may be reinforced or destabilised in the process, sometimes both at the same time. Three areas appear crucial to this endeavour: Comic literacies can be observed when studying comedy’s materialities, its arrangements and its affects. Regarding the first area of investigation, the special issue asks how comic literacies are connected to, and indeed depend on, the materiality of human or non-human bodies and things. The second area of inquiry turns to practices of arrangement in comedic dramaturgy, choreography, oratory, etc. which involve the positioning and coordinating of words, bodies, things, actions or sounds in space and time. Finally, the special issue is interested in the evolving relationship between comic literacies and affect.
We invite discussions of historically and culturally situated comedic artefacts and practices throughout the ages that explore the theoretical parameters of comic literacies through a social, economic, political, ethical, media, and/or aesthetic lens. Submissions that approach comic literacies comparatively or genealogically as well as empirical case studies using qualitative methods are also encouraged.
We suggest that authors choose whether to focus more on materialities, arrangements or affects to explore comic literacies. Topics and questions might include but are not limited to:
- How do specific comedic artefacts or practices produce, mediate or negotiate comic literacies within their historically and culturally distinct contexts?
- How do comedic materialities, arrangements or affects shape, probe and/or defamiliarize tacit knowledge, respectively?
- How might the comedic negotiation of established knowledge depend on specific media settings, genre conventions or audiences?
- What would a methodology of comic literacies look like that takes audiences’ access to, processing of and affective responses to comedy’s tacit knowledge into account?
- Finally, how can we theorise the relation between a comedic artefact or practice and shared knowledge, (Western) systems of knowledge production and epistemological uncertainty – including situations in which shared knowledge fails?
Please submit proposals (250-300 words) to aileen.behrendt@uni-potsdam.de by end of July 2026. Selected proposals will be invited to prepare articles of 6000-8000 words which will be due on 31st of January 2027 and will be peer reviewed. Articles will be published on-line as they are accepted.
The articles will be published as a special issue of the journal Comedy Studies in early/mid 2028. The special issue is edited by Aileen Behrendt (University of Potsdam), Karin Peters (University of Bonn) and Roxanne Phillips (KWI Essen). For more information please click here.