The Comedy Studies Reader (Paperback)

Nick Marx

ISBN 10: 1477316000 / ISBN 13: 9781477316009

Published by University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 2018

About this Item

Paperback. Winner, MPCA/ACA Book Award, Midwest Popular Culture Association / Midwest American Culture Association, 2020From classical Hollywood film comedies to sitcoms, recent political satire, and the developing world of online comedy culture, comedy has been a mainstay of the American media landscape for decades. Recognizing that scholars and students need an authoritative collection of comedy studies that gathers both foundational and cutting-edge work, Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz have assembled The Comedy Studies Reader.This anthology brings together classic articles, more recent works, and original essays that consider a variety of themes and approaches for studying comedic media-the carnivalesque, comedy mechanics and absurdity, psychoanalysis, irony, genre, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and nation and globalization. The authors range from iconic theorists, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, and Linda Hutcheon, to the leading senior and emerging scholars of today. As a whole, the volume traces two parallel trends in the evolution of the field-first, comedy's development into myriad subgenres, formats, and discourses, a tendency that has led many popular commentators to characterize the present as a "comedy zeitgeist"; and second, comedy studies' new focus on the ways in which comedy increasingly circulates in "serious" discursive realms, including politics, economics, race, gender, and cultural power. Surveying comedic texts and performers from The Jack Benny Program to Key and Peele, Saturday Night Live, and Stephen Colbert, this classroom-ready anthology offers a first-ever overview of the field of comedy studies. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781477316009

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Comedy Studies Reader (Paperback)
• Publisher: University of Texas Press, Austin, TX
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1477316000
• ISBN 13: 9781477316009
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

From classical Hollywood film comedies to sitcoms, recent political satire, and the developing world of online comedy culture, comedy has been a mainstay of the American media landscape for decades. Recognizing that scholars and students need an authoritative collection of comedy studies that gathers both foundational and cutting-edge work, Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz have assembled The Comedy Studies Reader. This anthology brings together classic articles, more recent works, and original essays that consider a variety of themes and approaches for studying comedic media―the carnivalesque, comedy mechanics and absurdity, psychoanalysis, irony, genre, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and nation and globalization. The authors range from iconic theorists, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, and Linda Hutcheon, to the leading senior and emerging scholars of today. As a whole, the volume traces two parallel trends in the evolution of the field―first, comedy’s development into myriad subgenres, formats, and discourses, a tendency that has led many popular commentators to characterize the present as a “comedy zeitgeist”; and second, comedy studies’ new focus on the ways in which comedy increasingly circulates in “serious” discursive realms, including politics, economics, race, gender, and cultural power.

About the Author

Nick Marx is an assistant professor of media studies at Colorado State University.

Matt Sienkiewicz is an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College.