Suffering in Medical Contexts: Laughter, Humor, and the Medical Carnivalesque

Lisa Gabbert is Associate Professor of Folklore and American Studies in the Department of English at Utah State University, where she directed the Folklore Program from 2013–2019. She held a visiting professorship in the Department of Communication at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, in 2015 and is a former executive board member of the American Folklore Society (2011–2013). She is the author of Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change, and the Good of the Community (2011) and, with Keiko Wells, An Introduction to Vernacular Culture in America: Society, Region, and Tradition (2017). Her research interests include folklore and landscape, festivity and play, and folklore in medical contexts.