The exploration of humor took a unique turn for a group of University of Virginia students this spring. Enrolled in an audio storytelling class, these students embarked on a creative journey to delve into the nuances of humor through the medium of podcasting.
In the Writing with Sound course, led by assistant professor of English Piers Gelly, students spend the semester dissecting podcasts and audio storytelling as a distinct art form. They hone skills in interviewing, writing for auditory engagement, and editing. For their culminating project, the class collectively selects a main theme, then divides into smaller teams to research and produce podcast episodes centered on their chosen subject.
Previous projects by Gelly’s students have included capturing 24 hours on the Lawn and examining the Marriage Pact dating experiment. This semester, the focus shifted to humor.
Among the students in the class were third-year students Harshika Challa, Sankalp Yadava, Nader Bashammakh, and fourth-year student Carter Fortune. They collaborated throughout the final month of the spring semester on this intriguing project.
“Humor was written on the board, and there were 20 different arrows coming out of the word. We ended up picking four subtopics to explore,” Fortune shared.
The group zeroed in on the psychology of laughter for their podcast segment.
“We all had our individual ideas about what we wanted to do in class. Humor was one, but we also talked about different types of anger, finding yourself in college and other things. Humor was picked because the whole class thought it would be interesting,” Fortune explained.
Fortune’s enrollment in a social psychology course the previous fall led to a key connection with his professor, Adrienne Wood, who heads the Emotion and Behavior Lab at UVA. Challa also had a connection within the lab, which bolstered their research efforts.
Teaming up with Sareena Chadha, a doctoral candidate in social psychology, the group decided to investigate “co-laughter,” the phenomenon of people laughing together. This study aimed to understand laughter’s role as a social cue and examine how laughter can be quantified in a laboratory environment.
“I think that the psychology of laughter is the root cause of humor. People find different things funny for different reasons,” noted Yadava. The group explored various aspects, such as why certain jokes amuse children, the dynamics of inside jokes, and the factors that determine humor.
“I’m not a very creative person,” admitted Bashammakh. “I’m a biology major, so most of the classes I take are really science-based, but this one was interesting.”
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