“Comedy, Play, Theory”, Helsinki, June 1– 2, 2026

This year’s workshop of the Research Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association will take place in Helsinki on 1-2 June 2026. Co-organised by Natalya Bekhta (Tampere University) and Karin Kukkonen (University of Oslo), the workshop is hosted by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and partly funded through the Research Council of Finland (grant no. 361957) and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne.

Programme

Monday, 1 June

10.00               Welcome from Hanne Appelqvist (HCAS), Natalya Bekhta & Karin Kukkonen

10.15-11.45   Panel I

Chair: Karin Kukkonen

Anne Duprat (Amiens) Aristotle’s Lost Marble, or: Did Literary Theory Really Miss the Joke?

Davide Giuriato (Zurich) Laughing at/as theory. On the praise of the fly

Ábel Tamás (Budapest) Laughing Signs: Theorising Acrostics and Telestichs

12.00-14.00   Lunch

14.00-15.30   Panel II

Chair: Natalya Bekhta

Karin Kukkonen (Oslo) Choose your game: The Theoretical Potential of Gameplay in the Salons

Enrica Zanin (Strasbourg) Theory at play: What happens to dramatic theory when, instead of commenting on a play to students, we play it with them?

Susanne Strätling (Berlin) Knight’s Move: Formalism at Play with Literary Theory

15.30-15.45   Coffee

15.45-17.15   Panel III

Chair: Karin Kukkonen

Ivana Perica (Berlin) Can the political novel produce a cheerful fart?

Marco Caracciolo (Ghent) Humor and Bad Environmentalism in Nonhuman Narration

Mengchen Lang (Shanghai) Contemporary Hybrid (Non)Fiction: A Playful Exercise of Fictionality Literacy

17.30-18.30   Business meeting

20.15               Dinner

Tuesday, 2 June

Chair: Natalya Bekhta

10.30-12.00   Keynote: Academy Professor Sari Kivistö (Tampere) Gently Biting Sheep: The Ethics of Humour in Early Modern Satirical Poetics

12.00-13.00   Lunch

13.00-14.00   Panel IV

Chair: Karin Kukkonen

Luciana Villas Boas (Rio de Janeiro) Greek Nonsense for Debate. Contemporary Reflections on Thomas More’s Utopia

Natalya Bekhta (Tampere) Utopia for Dark Times