Funny/Not Funny: Taking Comedy Seriously

Catalog description

This is a course about how comedy works, when it works, when it fails, and why it matters. Through novels, film, and television, we will consider what makes something funny, and what comedy does to and for us. We’ll think about how comedy becomes a way of engaging hard questions about social life, the body, gender, race, culture, and politics. In the process, we will investigate the risks comedians and comic writers take, and how they invite us to ponder the limits of humor—in other words, we’ll examine the risks that comedy runs and the reasons it runs them in the first place. At the center of our concerns is comedy as the mode of the underrepresented and disenfranchised — a genre of vulnerability and potency.