The Editor’s Drawers

Dear Readers:

We’re very happy to release our special issue “Black Laughs Matter,” which we announced two years ago in active support of AHSA’s statement of solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter. We are fortunate to have Darryl Dickson-Carr as guest editor. His work on Black satire, especially from the Harlem Renaissance to the contemporary period, is well known to scholars working in the fields of humor and African American rhetoric, literature, and culture. Darryl’s introductory essay will stake out the ground of our special issue, while I am sure that the six fine articles of “Black Laughs Matter” will capture your interest.

Our next special issue (9.2, fall 2023) will focus on participation and humor—instances of interaction between performers and audiences, opportunities to establish affinity, or catalysts of activism, to name a few. Our guest editors for the issue are Michael Moser and Nele Sawallisch, two distinguished American studies scholars from Germany. So keep your eye out for what we’re confident will be another in a string of successful special issues. And if you have a topic to propose for a special issue, let us know.

This issue also includes the debut of a new feature that we’re calling Spit Takes. The inaugural piece for this feature is Mike Reiss’s “The Algebra of Jokes.” Reiss has had a long and successful career in comedy, especially television comedy, having been a writer and showrunner for The Simpsons. His quick take in “The Algebra of Jokes” is full of witty insights about a particular genre of joke that requires the audience to work through the joke’s unspoken logic, and we expect you’ll find these remarks illuminating and entertaining. Truth be told, it was Reiss’s submission of this piece that prompted us to come up with the feature as a way to include it in our pages. Now our further hope is that others with professional experience in the production of humor will follow Reiss’s lead. Of course, the primary focus of StAH is still humor scholarship, but we’re always on the lookout for ways to engage our readers. And we’re hoping that Spit Takes will be a different way to spur your interest.

Finally, our next issue of Studies in American Humor will be stewarded by a new editorial team. My five-year term as editor is up, as is Jim Caron’s tenure as senior associate editor. Working with Jim and associate editor David Gillota; book review editor Sabrina Fuchs Abrams; contributing editors Joanne Gilbert, Gretchen Martin, Bruce Michelson, and Jonathan Rossing; guest editors Jim Caron, Darryl Dickson-Carr, Marianne Kongerslev, and Judith Yaross Lee (twice); all of the authors whose fine articles, book reviews, and On Second Thought comments have appeared in our pages; and our sharp-eyed PSUP copyeditor MJ Devaney has been a very fulfilling experience.

The fact that it has gone so well comes as a bit of a surprise to me. After agreeing to come on board, I had my reservations about whether I was up to the task. But the collaborative spirit that has been part of the editorial practice since Judith Lee’s tenure as editor, if not earlier, made for a very smooth transition. And we aim to continue that effective process as a new editorial team comes on board. In the interest of continuity, David Gillota will take the reins as editor. Given his great work as associate editor and as book review editor prior to that, moving him into the editor’s chair was an easy and sound decision. David’s exceptional organizational mastery has kept everything humming over the last five years. And our two new associate editors, Sabrina Fuchs Abrams and Gretchen Martin, also have years of experience in other StAH roles, so we’re expecting a seamless transition from issue 8.2 to issue 9.1. Christopher Gilbert will come on board as book review editor; his name should be familiar to our readers, given the frequency with which his work has appeared in our pages. And Todd Thompson and Heidi Hanrahan, who are no doubt well known to...