About the Journal
Focus and Scope
Theme: Laughter and Belonging
Call for Abstracts:
Laughing together can be a powerful force for bonding and bringing people closer to one another, but laughter and humour can also be divisive and exclusionary. This year’s conference theme “Laughter and Belonging” particularly invites presentations on either or both aspects of laughter and humour.
As in previous AHSN conferences, however, presentations are welcome on all aspects of social laughter and humour, and from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including not only humour studies as such, but also literary studies, linguistics, cultural studies, politics, psychology, philosophy, history, comedy studies, law, creative practices, sociology, communication studies and others.
Peer Review Process
The AHSN's Review policies are available on the http://www.sydney.edu.au/humourstudies website, or via this link.
Instructions to Reviewers - Proposals for AHSN Conference
Please review the proposed abstract and enter your review online.
Reviewers are asked to allocate a grade to each Proposal, providing reasons in all cases other than a simple acceptance without change (“A” below).
Please rank each Proposal in one of the following categories:
A. Outstanding/must include
B. Not outstanding but acceptable without revision
C. May be acceptable but requires revision and resubmission
D. Regrettably, should be rejected
Our Review Procedures are set out below, if you wish to remind yourself of them.
For technical difficulties in using this site, please contact:
Hannah McFarlane, Sydney eScholarship Journals, at: [email protected]
For all other enquiries, please contact:
Angus McLachlan, AHSN2017 Convenor, at: [email protected]
Thank you for your vital help in maintaining AHSN standards and integrity.
Review Procedures for Australasian Humour Studies Network Conference Proposals
(adopted at the Meeting of the AHSN Review Panel Members
Fairfax Meeting Room, The Women’s College, University of Sydney
5.45-7.10pm, 14 February 2010, Feast of S. Valentine)
The annual AHSN Conference is designed to operate as a colloquium. It is an interdisciplinary forum for discussion and exchange of ideas. Proposals for papers and workshops are not automatically accepted. The AHSN has a standing Review Panel to cover the range of interests and expertise of the Network and it is the function of Panel members to try and ensure relevance and adequate standards for each Conference.
The Panel considers without prejudice all abstracts put before it by the appropriate time and reserves the right to reject a proposal. A rejection is not open to discussion or negotiation.
Each proposal is considered by at least the two members of the Review Committee most relevant to the topic proposed. Should there be a serious discrepancy in judgment, a proposal is automatically considered by a further assessor. The criteria for assessment are: a) specific or general relevance; b) coherence; c) distinctiveness and d) feasibility.
Proposals directly relevant to the specified theme of the colloquium will be favoured but all proposals must at least be relevant to the interests of the Network. Coherence requires proposals to have an argument, case study or body of evidence that holds together. It is not code for favouring a specific approach, since Conferences and Colloquia are intended to stimulate discussion, not impose a “party line”. Distinctiveness means that the Panel does not look favourably on accounts of work already familiar to most or many participants, nor on those which lack substance or a basis in a field of knowledge. It welcomes work in progress, but not work that has failed to progress beyond a previous presentation, nor work that is already publicly available. The Panel also considers questions of undue overlap between papers. All proposals must meet constraints of allocated presentation time. Where workshops are invited, they allow for practical demonstrations of professional work relating to humour but must include an element of reflection and critique concerning the relations between theory and practice.
To these ends, Review Panel members are willing to seek clarification about a proposal and may ask for revision and resubmission rather than rejection. It is, however, neither desirable nor possible for the Review Committee to assess formally finished papers nor to completely blind referee submissions shaped as abstracts or proposals. The Panel gives special consideration to research students who are undertaking projects relating to humour in their own specific disciplines or beyond.
Open Access Policy
Accepted conference abstracts will be available on this site once the review process is complete.