Join us for a discussion of Leagues of Laughter with author A. Austin Garey, as she examines how a Soviet-created youth comedy game evolved across shifting political landscapes and ultimately became intertwined with the cultural context of today’s war in Ukraine.

Garey’s book traces the history of KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh — the Club of the Cheerful and Clever), a wildly popular comedy competition that captivated university students across the USSR in the 1960s and remained deeply embedded in educational institutions long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Russia and Ukraine between 2015 and 2019, Leagues of Laughter illuminates how international pressures and locally rooted values interacted to shape the continuation—and transformation—of this comedic tradition within two countries following increasingly divergent post-Soviet trajectories.

In this talk, Garey will explore how six decades of interconnected, cross-border stories reveal the complex ways in which humor and oppression became entangled, offering new insights into the cultural and historical undercurrents that inform Ukraine’s present-day conflict.

A light lunch will be provided. Students are invited to enter a raffle for a free copy of Leagues of Laughter. Additional copies of the book will also be available for purchase at the event.