Viva-voce examination – May 20, 8 p.m.- 10 p.m.

On May 20 at 8 p.m., Ulbazar Ilyassova will be defending her thesis in a viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

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Title: Why Kazakh comedians do not make jokes about women anymore: a study of humorous monologues about women 

Making jokes about women is a common pattern in contemporary male-dominated Kazakh comedy. Kazakh comedians make critical jokes about women, judging women’s behaviour and appearance and ridiculing them for following beauty trends or for going to the gym. This kind of comedy is widely popular in Kazakhstan, with humorous monologues performed in concert halls, then broadcast on TV, and later actively shared on various social media platforms. I link this representation of women as imagined by male Kazakh comedians to the history of Soviet and Soviet Kazakh comedy, where stage comedy developed as a form of social critique. Then, I closely read contemporary humorous monologues applying feminist theories of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan about the objectification of women by men. In doing so, I apply Irving Goffman’s term ‘footings’ to uncover the ways in which comedians communicate their critiques on women in front of a mixed audience. I reveal that comedians propagate traditional views on gender relations according to which women should be submissive to men in family and society. Male comedians criticize any changes in women that they fear may lead to dysfunction in traditional gender roles. In addition, I draw on interviews with audience members in an attempt to learn the social consequences of the ideologies of gender relations propagated in jokes about women. The interviews show that humour’s function as a social critique and as propaganda of national values contribute to positive receptions of jokes about women. Yet there is also a part of the audience who do not agree with these critiques of women. I argue that the reception of the audience depends on whether the viewers support or oppose the nationalistic views that the comedians communicate via their jokes.

Internal Advisers: Gabriel McGuire & Reza Taherkermani
External Adviser: Kristoffer Rees, Indiana University

Viva-voce examination – May 4, 4 p.m.- 6 p.m.

On May 4 at 4 p.m., David Orlov defended his thesis in a viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

Title: Origins of Bosnian Humor and Its Role During the Siege of Sarajevo

The present research provides an ethnographic study of Bosnian humor. The primary emphasis here is on the siege humor. Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was besieged from 5 April 1992 to 29 January 1996. Now it is known as the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Nevertheless, besieged Sarajevo is famous not only for the daily horrors experienced by its citizens and war crimes committed against them but also for the spirit that helped the city to survive. Humor constituted a significant part of that spirit. As Srdjan Vucetic, a scholar of Bosnian origins, in his article on humor and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, summed it up “Sarajevo owes a large part of its fame to the fabled spirit of its besieged citizens, who have employed humor to defuse the tension”. Although this statement is correct, assuming Sarajevan siege humor as only a coping mechanism that people have employed to diffuse tension is a too simplistic view of the phenomenon.

The research argues that the war has made Bosnian self-directed and self-deprecating humor more visible but its origins lie in the stereotypes ascribed to Bosnians, who were a historically oppressed and minority group, by outsiders long before the siege of Sarajevo. By engaging in self-directed humor Bosnians restore their dignity. Humor has become a natural coping mechanism that they use to cope with daily hardships and consequently, it became an inseparable part of Bosnian culture and identity. Not surprisingly humor persisted and flourished during the siege of Sarajevo.

Internal Advisers: James Nikopoulos & Jean-Francois Caron
External Adviser: Tanja Petrovic, Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia