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On Being Seriously Funny: What We Can Learn about Humor from Ann Ulanov

Everett, Stewart James

The paeans we sing about Ann Ulanov on the occasion of her retirement after forty-seven years of teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York are both plentiful and deserving. Those of us whose lives have been altered for the better, in big and small ways, by her writing, teaching, lecturing, and mentoring can easily testify to her extraordinary gift of being able to lucidly convey how the realities of the human psyche and the inner workings of the Divine Spirit interface with one another. Over the course of retirement celebration, portrait unveiling, and honorary festschrift, we laud her for the myriad contributions she has made on this front to the psychotherapeutic, religious, and academic communities of which she has been a part throughout her distinguished career. In the midst of such praise, we also readily find ourselves extolling her virtues of deep wisdom, sharp intellect, penetrative insight, and close attentiveness to even the smallest of details, which demonstrate her passionate love affair with life and soulful engagement with the wider world around her. As psychoanalyst, scholar, and teacher, she has long served, and continues to serve, as a guiding light for many who look to her in the hopes of finding and cultivating an inner light that is all their own.

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Union Seminary Quarterly Review
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Union Theological Seminary

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Union Theological Seminary
Publisher
Union Theological Seminary
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Union Seminary Quarterly Review
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June 23, 2021