Stand-up comedy represents a particularly potent form of rhetorical and performative criticism because of its potential duality. On the surface, a comedy set can look breezy and entertaining while containing a sharper, more critical message underneath. Like a fluffy, besprinkled cupcake hiding a potent antibiotic, stand-up comedy offers potentially healing insight under the cover of whimsy. Comedians have always utilized their performances to skewer those in power, but an increasing number have taken to the stage recently to address a particularly insidious social and cultural malady. The stigma associated with mental illness continues to limit the opportunities of those living with mental disorders, meaning comedians utilizing their performances to push back against this stigma represent a significant form of anti-mental-illness-stigma advocacy. In this dissertation, I argue that stand-up comedy is a uniquely subversive and resistant communicative act that enables performers to combat the stigma associated with mental illness. Grounding my discussion in literature about mental illness and two of the most common disorders, anxiety and depression, I construct an original performance criticism evaluative framework derived from three anti-stigma-advocacy techniques: protest, educate, and contact. While these techniques offer guidance for any kind of anti-stigma advocacy, I draw them into the realm of anti-mental-illness-stigma advocacy by utilizing my framework in a performance criticism of stand-up performances by Aparna Nancherla, Maria Bamford, Bo Burnham, and Chris Gethard—four comics known for discussing their mental health onstage. Moreover, I weave autoethnographic responses to each performance throughout my analysis to showcase the power of these cases of comedic anti-mental-illness-stigma advocacy to alter my perspective on my own anxiety.Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the potential of stand-up comedy as anti-mental-illness-stigma advocacy by chronicling my own growth in response to the work of these comedians. It also identifies aspects of stand-up that may be potentially useful to other kinds of anti-stigma advocacy. Additionally, the framework created and used in this dissertation provides both a rubric for future anti-stigma performance criticism and a blueprint for creating anti-stigma performance. Stand-up comedy is a significant performance genre and stand-up comedians can launch biting critiques that cultivate greater cultural citizenship for the marginalized and disenfranchised. A significant number of people will undoubtedly continue to spot the silly facade of stand-up comedy and look past the deeper insight, even though it can educate an audience, protest misinformation, and provide opportunities for contact between otherwise unfamiliar demographics. My effort here is to value stand-up comedy as a powerful communicative act because it has changed my life and will continue to incite change for many others. And that’s no joke.

A comedy web series about two stoners who wake up covered in blood with no memory of the night before and must solve a murder the only way they know how... by smoking.

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Scholarship on humour in the Indian context has hardly looked at how performative humour or comedy intersects with the different axes of social stratification to impact caste groups perched at a disadvantageous position. And although English stand-up comedy in the country is gradually being recognized as an important facet of contemporary popular culture, efforts to see how this genre of performative humour aids and abets caste discrimination is still largely missing in the academic discourse. This study is an attempt to address this knowledge gap. By considering English political stand-up comedy as a subgenre of the wider performative art form, it aims to determine how comedians use political humour to critique the dominant understanding of the nation that the Indian State is trying to peddle to its citizens, and more importantly, if caste forms an analytical tool that informs their critique. This study uses a qualitative discourse analysis methodology to study precisely how caste finds representation in the comedians’ critique of the nation. It selects six political stand-up comedians and examines all of their stand-up comedy clips available for viewing on YouTube. By using a range of theoretical concepts, this research attempts to recognize the important connection between caste and political humour in India. It finds that English political stand-up comedy in India is anti-ritualistic as well as hegemonic. Comedians raise difficult, politically charged topics, normalize the critique of important political developments through humour and in doing this, negotiate the boundaries of free speech. They promote new understandings about the nation that is in stark contrast to the dominant ideology. But at the same time, the domain of English political stand-up comedy is not representative of caste questions. Comedians hardly ever talk about caste, and even when they do, it is mostly a passing remark or a hurried reference. Caste is also not represented in the comedians’ identities since most of them hail from upper caste backgrounds. English political stand-up comedy, then, in spite of its democratizing potential, reflects and reproduces the caste bias inherent in the broader national public sphere. These research findings prompt a discussion on caste in popular culture and institute political humour as a legitimate entry point into the sociological analysis of Indian society. / Graduate / 2022-08-06

This dissertation examines five distinctly different comic operas by Antonín Dvořák, composed over a period of almost thirty years. I demonstrate ample evidence of their reflecting Dvořák's national identity as well as that of the Czech nation at a time of rising nationalism. I also demonstrate how Dvořák's compositional choices reveal his capacity as a musical dramatist of comic opera. I have examined and analyzed the libretti, full scores, and piano/vocal reductions of the five operas for references to national identity and for comedy. Musical elements such as dance rhythms, orchestral dudy (bagpipe) drone, the ascending interval of a fourth, and familiar folk tunes are interpreted as Slavic, Czech, or Bohemian. I have considered Dvořák's musical illustration of stereotypical stock characters and situations, and musical exploitation of social conventions and norms. Comic effects of recurrence, reversal, and pre- and post-outcome responses are achieved through acoustic signals such as unexpected tempo, dynamic, rhythmic, and harmonic shifts, and repetition in excess. I address the limited scholarship regarding Dvořák's operatic contributions — particularly as regards comic opera — in the field of opera studies, and challenge the argument that while there may be a generic "folk-tone," there is very little musical evidence of his national identity. Dvořák's ability to communicate far more to the audience than what is contained in the libretti alone is demonstrated not only in the broad scope of these five distinctly different operas, but also in the depth of musical support, including rhythm, melody, motivic development, and rich orchestration. / 2024-11-30T00:00:00Z

This research project aims to contribute to the field of communication and social change through the analysis of different humoristic subversive mechanisms used by feminist comedians in Spanish society and their potential as a transformative tool in the country’s socio-political context.The personal stories of three feminist comedians interviewed for this research are analysed through the feminist standpoint theory, valuing the epistemic knowledge of women’s experiences and the potential of their communication through comedy as a contestation tool. Understanding knowledge as socially situated, through the experiences of the interviewed women, this research provides an analysis of the evolution of subversive mechanisms through comedy to contest the existing sociopolitical barriers.Comedy provides a safe space for the communication of subversive feminist messages that generate alternative points of view contesting existing hegemonic structures of knowledge and contribute to break gender stereotypes regaining subjectivity for women. Sharing marginal personal stories could promote connections among women through the identification of the oppressions suffered, creating a sorority movement that contributes to the evolution of feminism.

Challenging the common notion that mythological comedies simply burlesque stories found in epic and tragedy, this dissertation shows that comic poets were active participants in creating and transmitting myths and argues that their mythical innovations influenced accounts found in tragedy and prose mythography. Although no complete Greek mythological comedy survives, hundreds of fragments and titles reveal that this type of drama was extremely popular; they were staged in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy and make up about one-half of all comedies produced in some periods. These fragments, supplemented by Plautus' Amphitruo (the only nearly complete mythological comedy), vase-paintings, and ancient testimonia, shed light on the vibrant tradition of comic mythology. In chapter one, I argue that ancient scholars' and prose mythographers' citations of comedies invite us to view comedians as authoritative myth-makers. I then survey the development of mythological comedy throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The plays' titles reveal common mythical topics as well as a number of comic myths that survived independent of the tragic tradition. In chapter two, I argue that Cratinus' Dionysalexandros and Epicharmus' Odysseus the Deserter are wildly innovative comedies that challenge previous accounts for mythological authority. In chapter three, Epicharmus' Pyrrha and Prometheus, Pherecrates' Antmen, and Cratinus' Wealth Gods are studied to show how comedians created new stories by fusing myths together and by combining myth and historical reality. In chapter four, I look at the affairs of Zeus to show the dramatists' different approaches to the same mythical material. While tragedians tend to focus on the suffering of Zeus' victims, comedians feature Zeus' humorously outlandish and usually harmless seductions. In chapter five, on the Amphitruo, I show how Plautus has transformed a myth about the birth of Heracles into a story about Jupiter's long-term affair with a pregnant woman. In chapter six, I enter the debate about comedy's influence on tragedy and argue that mythical variants invented by the comic poet Cratinus have been incorporated into Euripides' Trojan Women and Helen, which demonstrates that, as early as the fifth century, comic poets were seen as mythological authorities. / 2017-06-30T00:00:00Z

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