ABSTRACT
Humor theory and queer theory share their organized yet also subversive challenging of norms. Jessica Milner Davis says that the contribution that traditional literary and performance studies can make to humor studies is not well understood. Admittedly, the comic as opposed to the tragic has always suffered the stigma associated with all things non-serious. Research by Giselinde Kuipers has shown that there are group as well as individual differences in appreciation of humor as entertainment, for example, for TV comedy shows, types of joke, and stand-up comedy performers. If comic styles or flavors can be reliably pinpointed more broadly and perhaps across all kinds of humor-verbal, visual, and performative-interesting insights into both taste-culture preferences and leisure habits should result. The way forward for research in the field is to embrace all possible paths for inquiry to more fully understand the complexity of meanings and contexts, including the arts, material and visual culture, and social practices.
