This panel, sponsored by the American Humor Studies Association (AHSA), brings together three scholarly considerations of literary and filmic treatments of several distinct but mutually informing moments in American cultural history: ongoing battles over the cultural meanings of chattel slavery, enslaved peoples, and slave narratives; the failures of capitalism and commodification during the Great Depression; and overlapping racial prejudices (and shared resistance to them) in the 1960s through 1980s. This topic is particularly important for our moment because, as these three papers will demonstrate collectively, humor impacts audiences’ attitudes not just through catharsis and consolation but also through more negatively charged emotions. That is, humor expressing world-weary cynicism or engaging in the affects of pessimism and desolation can point towards a better way forward (or, at least, point away from a bad way). These papers demonstrate how comic writers and filmmakers leverage sarcasm, stereotypes, and even cynical slapstick to offer timely cultural and political critiques. In this way, all three papers connect to recent scholarship on the politics of affect, particularly Nathan Wolff’s Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019). This is also a trenchant topic in humor studies, as two new books show: Eran Zelnick’s American Laughter, American Fury (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025) and Christopher Gilbert’s When Comedy Goes Wrong (Indiana UP, 2025).

Richard Aldersley’s “Cynical Humors: Nathanael West, Depressed American Dreams, and the Comedy of Capitalism”explores West’s humor as a mode of cynicism in the context of American capitalism and identity during the Great Depression. Relying on satirical exaggeration, black humor, and the grotesque to reflect the sociopolitical and psychological distortions of the Depression era, West's cynical comedies depict the monstrous failures of capitalism and expose the surreal contradictions of the American Dream. In A Cool Million, West parodies the Horatio Alger myth, using grotesque violence and slapstick to highlight how the promises of upward mobility are undercut by the brutal mechanisms of finance and exploitation. In Miss Lonelyhearts, West’s humor turns inward, as the protagonist’s existential crisis reflects the commodification of human suffering in a society where emotional pain becomes a product to be consumed. West's novels depict the comedy of capitalism via an ironic hope that belies the credo of "full faith and credit" at a time when there was a desperate lack of both.

In “A Great (American) Joke: Satirizing the Slave Narrative in Percival Everett’s James (2024),” Esme Feurtado compares Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (2015) and James, arguing that the humor in James is neither cathartic nor liberatory, as Everett chooses to play the slave narrative straight in order to estrange it, turning the form itself into the object of critique. Feurtado contends that Everett’s approach is an extension of The Sellout’s satirical conceit, operating as a wry commentary on Jim’s ever-present place in the American literary imaginary. For beneath his ostensibly sincere approach to one of America’s most formative fictions of slavery narrative lies a metafictional critique of the literary market’s desire for such narratives themselves; Everett’s intervention, she argues, is not his novel subversions of the original text, but his novel’s recursiveness: a joke run thin.

Finally, in “Mel Brooks: Laughing Off the Past,” Jonathan Tabutol examines Mel Brooks’ incorporation of contentious historical moments in his comedy. His presentation will explore two scenes from Mel Brooks’s filmography—the Yiddish-speaking Native Americans from Blazing Saddles and the Hollywood show tune in “The Spanish Inquisition” from History of the World Part I—to consider how Brooks’s comedy evokes commentary on historically minoritized communities in American cultures, particularly how humor unifies within, and outside of, marginalized communities. Humor about racial prejudices brings purpose to the caricatures in Brooks’s work, depicting different ethnic groups who have each sought acceptance in the U.S by using the trauma of the past to shape the future.

As panel organizer, I selected three papers to ensure sufficient time for discussion. As panel presider, I will strictly enforce time limits, encourage discussion, and formulate synthesizing queries that involve all panelists, drawing on my experience in moderating AHSA talks and panels. All three presenters are currently doctoral students because the AHSA governing board has prioritized the development of emerging scholars in humor studies. Yet this panel represents an appropriate diversity of experience, approaches, and viewpoints, in part because the presenters live in three different nations, have different ethnic identities, and study different eras of literature and film.