Lecture

Insect Antics

Insect Antics A Louse-y Sense of Humor

ABOUT 

  • ABOUT May Berenbaum

    May Berenbaum is the Swanlund Professor and head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of numerous magazine articles as well as three books about insects for the general public, Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs, and Rock 'n' Roll, Ninety-nine Gnats, Nits, and Nibblers, and The Earwig's Tail: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends. Berenbaum also organizes the annual Insect Fear Film Festival, a celebration of Hollywood's entomological excesses.

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  • ABOUT Amy Leach

    Amy Leach received a Rona Jaffe Award in 2008.  She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and her essays have appeared in Best American Essays 2009, A Public Space, The Iowa Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She lives in Evanston, Illinois and is working on a book about caterpillars, pea tendrils, and the moon.

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Face it: bugs are just funny. All those legs, the pullulating antennae, the shiny carapace, their general squishiness, the way they freak us out. May Berenbaum’s day job is professor of entomology at the University of Illinois; on the side, she’s the humor columnist for the American Entomologist, contemplating everything from cockroach farts to bug-squashing erotica. Writer Amy Leach, a regular contributor to A Public Space, is working on a book about caterpillars, pea tendrils, and the moon. Together they muse on the scientific and comic sides of insect life, as well as the intersection of the two.

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