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Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

The Monster And The Comics: Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder And America Popular Culture, Aaron Barlow Jan 2020

The Monster And The Comics: Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder And America Popular Culture, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


Comedian Hosts And The Demotic Turn, Kathleen Collins Jan 2018

Comedian Hosts And The Demotic Turn, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Podcasting is a showcase for what cultural studies scholar Graeme Turner coined “the demotic turn” or the increasing visibility of the "ordinary person" in the today’s media landscape. Collins argues that the emergence of a particular breed of podcasts – comedian-hosted interviews with celebrities – function in an “off-label” manner as a form of self-help or vicarious therapy. The emergence and rapid growth of this genre can attributed to three main factors: a confessional culture, the triumph of experience over expertise, and the democratization allowed by the form’s technology. She explores the link between emotional intimacy and comedy, and analyzes …


Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick Jan 2011

Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick

American Studies Honors Projects

This Honors project is a site of intersection of my academic and activist interests in interrogating Whiteness, my social identity as a cultural Jewish American, and my creative passions in comedy performance. The tragicomic films The Graduate, Goodbye, Columbus, and Annie Hall of the 1960s and 1970s articulate the painful process of Jewish self- and group-definition in relation to dominant culture amidst fractures amongst Jews and external hostility and invitation. The collision of Jews’ long history of humor as a cultural practice and the turbulence and ambivalence of the post-World War II moment facilitated a space for Jewish …