LAUSR

Comedy has an important political role in entrenching or overturning existing hierarchies of power, and these are identified through reading strategies that take seriously questions of representation. This was the logic behind the organisation of ‘Mock the Weak: Comedy and the Politics of Representation’, the conference that birthed the papers collected in this special edition. Co-organised by Dr Helen Davies and Dr Sarah Ilott (that’s us!), the conference took place at Teesside University and Stockton Arc in September 2016. Collected here are some of the best papers on the topics of gender, sexuality, and the body originally produced for the conference.