Comedy as Social Discourse

Catalog description

Focuses upon the way that comedy can speak with particular clarity to the American condition from behind the microphone and, by extension on the big and small screens. By examining how comic conventions, personae and sensibilities in standup respond to change in social and political sensibilities at specific historical moments, we tease out why comedy, perhaps more than any other genre, can get people to engage (and to think about) a variety of human experiences--often in spite of themselves.