{"id":117300,"date":"2012-10-16T10:47:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T14:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=117300"},"modified":"2018-07-27T10:52:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T14:52:45","slug":"jakub-kazecki-assistant-professor-of-german","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2012\/10\/16\/jakub-kazecki-assistant-professor-of-german\/","title":{"rendered":"Jakub Kazecki, assistant professor of German"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jakub Kazecki, assistant professor of German. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen\/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you grew up with M*A*S*H<\/em>\u00a0 or the World War II cartoons of Bill Mauldin, the power of battlefield humor won’t be new to you.<\/p>\n

Jakub Kazecki, hired in 2012 as assistant professor of German in a joint appointment with Raluca Cernahoschi<\/a>, has invested considerable research in the topic \u2014 as evidenced by his book Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives<\/em>, released in July 2012 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).<\/p>\n

Kazecki’s book focuses on World War I fiction with an autobiographical basis, including such well-known works such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>. But while Kazecki’s field is German literature, he points out that humor operates in similar ways across nationalities and other constructs of identity.<\/p>\n

Within a given military setting, Kazecki argues, even pro- and anti-war factions tend to find the same things funny. Remarque is considered a pacifist, but what his soldiers laugh at “is much the same as what the soldiers in works by more conservative authors laugh at. They subscribe to a similar set of values.”<\/p>\n

“Humor has a strict social function that organizes relationships between members of groups,” he says. For instance, when we laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel, “it means, first, that we\u2019re bonding and creating a group.”<\/p>\n

But it also means that the group is marking as undesirable a trait — here, clumsiness. “We\u2019re acknowledging shared values about not being clumsy,” he explains. “That function is universal across cultures.”<\/p>\n

In short, you’re either laughing with someone or laughing at them \u2014 but both have the same result, the strengthening of group identity.<\/p>\n

A native of Poland, Kazecki taught at Central Connecticut State University for four years prior to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and previously taught at McMaster University in Ontario and the University of British Columbia, where he received a doctorate in Germanic studies.<\/p>\n

He earned master’s degrees at Adam-Mickiewicz-University in Poznan, Poland, and at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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