The Chicago Blog

This Saturday the 20th annual Chicago Humanities Festival kicks off with 12 events in Hyde Park. Titled "Laughter" this year's festival offers events that both analyze and enact humor in the humanities featuring among other events a special edition of the annual Latke-Hamantash debate with University of Chicago professors Philip Gossett and Ted Cohen—both contributors to Ruth Fredman Cernea's The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate—along with James Shapiro and moderator Daniel Libenson. (12:00 pm Mandel Hall)

Other events this Saturday include: a talk by comedy's first and only black/white duo, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, authors of Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White (2:00 pm DuSable Museum of African American History); a talk titled "From Vice to Virtue: Molière's Comedic Mission" by Larry Norman, author of The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (12:30 pm Court Theatre); and a talk about opera and laughter with Martha Feldman, author of Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (2:00 pm Mandel Hall).

For more info navigate to the Chicago Humanities Festival website.

Also see an excerpt and recipes from Cernea's The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate and this excerpt from Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White.