Giselinde Kuipers
Giselinde Kuipers is the third holder of the Norbert Elias part-time Chair, which is now located at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Giselinde received an MA with distinction in cultural anthropology from Utrecht University. During her studies, she took courses in anthropology as well as psychology, philosophy, history, and sociology, including courses in civilising processes and figurational sociology with the first holder of the Norbert Elias Chair, Nico Wilterdink.
She wrote a doctoral dissertation at the Amsterdam School for Social science Research, where she arrived in 1995 (so sadly, too late to meet Norbert Elias there). She wrote a dissertation about social differences in sense of humour, under the supervision of Joop Goudsblom. In 2001, she received her PhD in sociology with distinction. The translated and expanded version of this dissertation, Good Humor Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke, was a finalist for the 2007 Norbert Elias Prize.
After receiving her PhD, Giselinde worked as a lecturer in the Department of Communication Science of the University of Amsterdam, spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania, became a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Culture and the Arts at Erasmus University, and then went back to the University of Amsterdam Sociology Department, where she now is an Associate Professor.
She has published in Dutch and English on humour, popular culture, taste and stratification, media, and cultural globalisation. She is currently completing a book, about the import, translation and reception of American television programs - specifically comedy, which is considered the hardest genre to translate - to four European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. This book is provisionally entitled Comedy and Hegemony. In May 2010, she will start a new project, funded by the European Research Council, called "Towards a comparative sociology of beauty: The transnational modeling industry and the social shaping of beauty standards in six European countries."
Giselinde was a member of the Editorial Board of the Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, and currently is on the editorial board of its slightly more mainstream successor, Sociologie. Giselinde will give her inaugural lecture n the Norbert Elias Chair at the EUR on Friday 11 June 2010, at 4 pm in the Aula of the University.
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Selected Publications
Kuipers, Giselinde (forthcoming 2010) 'Cultural globalization as the emergence of a transnational cultural field. Transnational television and national media landscapes in four European countries'. Accepted for publication in American Behavioral Scientist.
Kuipers, Giselinde & Jeroen de Kloet (2009) 'Banal cosmopolitanism and The Lord of the Rings. The limited role of national differences in global media consumption', in Poetics 37 (2): 99-118.
Janssen, Susanne, Giselinde Kuipers & Marc Verboord (2008) 'Cultural globalization and arts journalism. The international orientation of arts and culture coverage in American, Dutch, French, and German newspapers 1955-2005', in American Sociological Review 73 (5): 719-740.
Kooijman, Jaap & Giselinde Kuipers (2008) 'Amerikaanse toestanden', in Sociologie 4 (2/3).
Kuipers, Giselinde (2008) 'The Muhammad cartoon controversy and the globalization of humor', in Humor International Journal for Humor Research 21 (1): 7-11; 32-34.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2008) 'Comment dit-on "d'oh" en Français?', in Contexts, winter 2008, p. 54-57.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2008) 'The sociology of humor', in Victor Raskin (ed.) Read First! The Primer of Humor Research, pp. 365-402. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2006) Good Humor, Bad Taste. A Sociology of the Joke, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2006) 'Television and taste hierarchy: The case of Dutch television comedy', in Media, Culture and Society 28 (3): 359-378.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2006) 'The social construction of digital danger: Debating, defusing, and inflating the moral dangers of online humor and pornography in the Netherlands and the United States', in New Media and Society 8 (3): 379-400.
Kuipers, Giselinde (2005) 'Where was King Kong when we needed him?" Public discourse, digital disaster jokes, and the functions of laughter after 9/11', in The Journal of American Culture 28 (1): 70-84.
Kuipers, Giselinde, Jeroen de Kloet & Suzanne Kuik (eds.) (2003) 'Digitaal contact: het net van de begrensde mogelijkheden', in special issue Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift 30 (1/2).