When Plato said that life should be lived as play, was he kidding? A daylong workshop on Feb. 18, titled “Death is the Punchline: Can We Laugh Now? Seeing the Funny Side With New Vision,” will take up that question and more. The workshop will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18, in 317 Thomson.
Neil Elgee, a UW School of Medicine faculty emeritus, has arranged for an appearance by Kirby Farrell, English faculty member and cultural critic at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for the event. Elgee said the theme will be “Laughing at Death: The Evolution of Humor to Disarm Fundamentalism,” and that it will be centered on the work of Ernest Becker, author of Denial of Death, who strove to increase understanding and reduce violence in society.
“Humor is better if it’s smiling, and we are talking about the evolution of laughter to smile at one’s own belief systems and not make fun of other people’s belief systems,” Elgee said. “It’s trying to come at fundamentalism constructively.”
Elgee said participants are invited to bring jokes and cartoons to the workshop to have them analyzed with Becker’s work in mind. For more information, call 206-232-2994.