Cathy Bao Bean, President 
Society for Values in Higher Education
357 Main Street
Blairstown, NJ 07825
Phone: 908-852-7426
cathy@cathybaobean.com
www.cathybaobean.com

Cathy Bao Bean, author of The Chopsticks-Fork Principle, A Memoir and Manual, is an (im)(e)migrant, aerobics instructor, daughter, business manager, mother, friend, writer, sister, educational consultant, wife, and member of the executive boards of the NJ Council for the Humanities, Society for Values in Higher Education, and Ridge and Valley Conservancy. Previously, she was a philosophy teacher, cook, student, carpool driver. None of it was painless.  All of it was fun - except the cooking.

Summary of Session: Bridging Cultures with Good Humor: Identities and Laughter
To understand a culture is to understand its humor & to differentiate dysfunctional stereotypes from functional generalizations. Because Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, & conflict, good humor can build preemptive resilience to fear of diversity within & without us. Yet joking often excludes the other & "I don't get it" are words most avoid. So these words must be the first step onto a bridge that will extend into a shared future.
 
Learning objectives of the session:
(1) Expand people's horizons or feeling of inclusion by showing how we are all at least bicultural, (2) Sensitize people to why someone may insist upon, resent, or ignore describing his/her American experience w/ an antecedent ethnic heritage such as Chinese-American, Irish-American, African-American, & (3) Know the moral hazard in provoking laughter without intelligence & care so laughter doesn’t come at the expense of others' well-being to the Golden Rule is "Do NOT do unto others what you would NOT have done to yourself."

Summary of Keynote: Bridging Cultures with Good Humor

Although we cannot understand a culture without understanding its humor, too often grist for the humor mill is shared only with obvious peers. I aim to enlarge the circle of peers by describing the “hyphenated” American as someone who goes from the ‘familiar’ to the ‘foreign’ on a daily basis. Whether from one side of the cafeteria to another, or one country to another, we all emigrate and immigrate from a more traditional world to/from the modern and back again. However diverse, this is what we all have in common. Whether an Asian-American burning Spirit Money for the dead before designing a building or African-American with a lucky charm when flying into space, specifying traditional and modern contexts clarifies where cultural bridges are grounded.