Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
- Cambridge Companions to Theatre and Performance
- The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Comedians’ Insights What Do You Do to Prepare to Go Onstage?
- Part I Time and Place
- Part II Interpretation and Meaning
- Part III Performance Dynamics
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Part II - Interpretation and Meaning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2025
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
- Cambridge Companions to Theatre and Performance
- The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Comedians’ Insights What Do You Do to Prepare to Go Onstage?
- Part I Time and Place
- Part II Interpretation and Meaning
- Part III Performance Dynamics
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy , pp. 105 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Further Reading
Barreca, Regina, They Used to Call Me Snow White … But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992).Google Scholar
Beale, Sam, The Comedy and Legacy of Music Hall Women 1880–1920: Brazen Impudence and Boisterous Vulgarity (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Joanne R, Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Gray, Frances, Women and Laughter (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mizejewski, Linda and Sturtevant, Victoria (eds), Hysterical: Women in American Comedy (Austin: Texas University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Tomsett, Ellie, Stand-Up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).10.5040/9781350302310CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willett, Cynthia and Willett, Julie, Uproarious: How Feminist and Other Subversive Comics Speak the Truth (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Wood, Katelyn Hale, Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Further Reading
Gilbert, Joanne R., Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Gilbert, Joanne, ‘Laughs Last: Gender, Power, and Comic Identity’, in Peacock, Louise (ed.), A Cultural History of Comedy in the Modern Age (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), pp. 87–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Joanne, ‘Lesbian Stand-Up Comics and the Politics of Laughter’, in Dickinson, Peter, Higgins, Anne, St Pierre, Paul Matthew, Solomon, Diana, and Zwagerman, Sean (eds), Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice (Lanham, MD: Farleigh Dickinson Press, co-published with Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), pp. 185–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennefeld, Maggie, Berke, Annie, and Rennett, Michael, ‘In Focus: What’s So Funny about Comedy and Humour Studies? Introduction’, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2019: p. 138.Google Scholar
Krefting, Rebecca, ‘Hannah Gadsby Stands Down: Feminist Comedy Studies’, JCMS: Journal of Cinema & Media Studies, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2019: pp. 165–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krefting, Rebecca, ‘Hannah Gadsby: On the Limits of Satire’, Studies in American Humour, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2019: pp. 93–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cynthia, Willett and Willett, Julie, Uproarious: How Feminist and Other Subversive Comics Speak the Truth (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Further Reading
Limon, John, Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Maus, Derek C. and Donahue, James J. (eds), Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Danielle Fuentes, Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2020).Google Scholar
Watkins, Mel, On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999).Google Scholar
Womack, Ytasha L., Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Wood, Katelyn Hale, Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Further Reading
Aarons, Debra and Mierowsky, Marc, ‘Obscenity, Dirtiness and Licence in Jewish comedy’, Comedy Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2014: pp. 165–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).Google Scholar
Albert, Goldman and Lawrence, Schiller, Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!! (New York: Penguin Books, 1991).Google Scholar
Kanfer, Stefan, A Summer World: The Astonishing History of the Jews in the Catskills (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990).Google Scholar
Nachman, Gerald, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 50s and 60s (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003).Google Scholar
Oring, Elliott, The Jokes of Sigmund Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish Identity, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).Google Scholar
Richler, Mordecai, ‘The Catskills: Land of Milk and Money’, Holiday Magazine, July 1965.Google Scholar
Wisse, Ruth R., The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Wisse, Ruth R., No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Further Reading
Bingham, Shawn Chandler and Green, Sara E., Seriously Funny: Disability and the Paradoxical Power of Humor (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borum Chattoo, Caty and Feldman, Lauren, A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartblay, Cassandra, ‘Welcome to Sergeichburg: Disability, Crip Performance, and the Comedy of Recognition in Russia’, The Journal of Social Policy Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2014: pp. 111–124.Google Scholar
Krefting, Rebecca, All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockyer, Sharon, ‘From Comedy Targets to Comedy-Makers: Disability and Comedy in Live Performance’, Disability & Society, Vol. 30, No. 9, 2015: pp. 1397–1412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockyer, Sharon, ‘“It’s Really Scared of Disability”: Disabled Comedians’ Perspectives of the British Television Comedy Industry’, The Journal of Popular Television, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2015: pp. 179–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockyer, Sharon and Pickering, Michael, ‘You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media’, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2008: pp. 808–820.10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00108.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Nicola, ‘A Preliminary Study of Some Broad Disability Related Themes within the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’, Disability & Society, Vol. 25, No. 5, 2010: pp. 539–549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meier, Matthew R. and Schmitt, Casey R. (eds), Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-Up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change (New York and London: Routledge, 2017).Google Scholar
Reid, D. Kim, Stoughton, Edy Hammond, and Smith, Robin M., ‘The Humorous Construction of Disability: “Stand-Up” Comedians in the United States’, Disability & Society, Vol. 21, No. 6, 2006: pp. 629–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Further Reading
Bell, Nancy, ‘Reactions to Humor, Non-laugher’, in Attardo, Salvatore (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Volume 2 (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington, DC: Sage, 2014).Google Scholar
Bennett, Joe, ‘The Critical Problem of Cynical Irony: Meaning What You Say and Ideologies of Class and Gender’, Social Semiotics, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2016: pp. 250–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Leon, ‘Near the Knuckle? It Nearly Took My Arm Off! British Comedy and the “New Offensiveness”’, Comedy Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010: pp. 181–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockyer, Sharon, ‘Dynamics of Social Class Contempt in Contemporary British Television Comedy’, Social Semiotics, Vol. 20, No.2, 2010: pp. 121–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Brett, ‘A Special Freedom: Regulating Comedy Offence’, in Bucaria, Chiara and Barra, Luca (eds), Taboo Comedy: Television and Controversial Humour (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 209–226.10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez, Raúl, The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, Lloyd and Becker, Sue, ‘Racism in Comedy Reappraised: Back to Little England?’, Comedy Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010: pp. 191–200.10.1386/cost.1.2.159_1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Simon, The Rhetoric of Brexit Humour: Comedy, Populism and the EU Referendum (London and New York: Routledge, 2021).10.4324/9780429329715CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Simon, The Rhetoric of Racist Humour: US, UK and Global Race Joking (London and New York: Routledge, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Simon and Morgan, Karen, ‘What’s the Point of Offensive Humour?’, The Conversation, 2017, https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-point-of-offensive-humour-76889.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Douglas, Mary, ‘Jokes’, in Douglas, Mary (ed.), Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 146–164.Google Scholar
Frances-White, Deborah, The Guilty Feminist: From Our Noble Goals to Our Worst Hypocrisies (London: Virago, 2018).Google Scholar
The Guilty Feminist [podcast] (2015–), https://guiltyfeminist.com/.Google Scholar
Quirk, Sophie ‘Comedy Clubs That Platform Marginalised Identities: Prefigurative Politics in Sophie Duker’s Wacky Racists’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2022: pp. 373–388.10.1177/13675494211037024CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomsett, Ellie, ‘“Less Dick Jokes”: Women-Only Comedy Line-Ups, Audience Expectations and Negotiating Stereotypes’, in Double, Oliver and Lockyer, Sharon (eds.), Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2022), pp. 239–265.10.1007/978-3-030-97351-3_11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: WCAG 2.0 A
The PDF of this book
conforms to version 2.0 of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG), ensuring core accessibility principles are addressed and meets the basic
(A)
level of WCAG compliance, addressing essential accessibility barriers.
Content Navigation
Table of contents navigation
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Index navigation
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Reading Order & Textual Equivalents
Single logical reading order
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
Short alternative textual descriptions
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
Structural and Technical Features
ARIA roles provided
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.