Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change

In recent decades, some of the most celebrated and culturally influential American oratorical performances have come not from political leaders or religious visionaries, but from stand-up comics. Even though comedy and satire have been addressed by rhetorical scholarship in recent decades, little attention has been paid to stand-up. This collection is an attempt to further cultivate the growing conversation about stand-up comedy from the perspective of the rhetorical tradition. It brings together literatures from rhetorical, cultural, and humor studies to provide a unique exploration of stand-up comedy that both argues on behalf of the form’s capacity for social change and attempts to draw attention to a series of otherwise unrecognized rhetors who have made significant contributions to public culture through comedy.

Matthew R. Meier is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at West Chester University in West Chester, PA.

Casey R. Schmitt is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Lakeland College in Howards Grove, WI.