FMS 598/490 Comedy as Social Discourse
Professor Bambi Haggins

Comedy is a powerful discursive tool; the notion (attributed to multiple sources from George Bernard Shaw and Joe Orton to my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Roshko), that if one gets the audience laughing, then while their mouths are open, you can shove the truth in seems quite applicable here.” (Laughing Mad p. 243) The course 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 will 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. .