MACMILLAN Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)

Product Description This collection is the first to focus on the transgressive and transformative power of American female humorists. It explores the work of authors and comediennes such as Carolyn Wells, Lucille Clifton, Mary McCarthy, Lynne Tillman, Constance Rourke, Roz Chast, Amy Schumer and Samantha Bee, and the ways in which their humor challenges gendered norms and assumptions through the use of irony, satire, parody, and wit. The chapters draw from the experiences of women from a variety of racial, class, and gender identities and encompass a variety of genres and comedic forms including poetry, fiction, prose, autobiography, graphic memoir, comedic performance, and new media. Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers will appeal to a general educated readership as well as to those interested in women’s and gender studies, humor studies, urban studies, American literature and cultural studies, and media studies. Review “[This book] brings together in one volume the most well-recognized and the most cutting-edge scholars, creating the most comprehensive and innovative collection of essays addressing the intersection of American comedy and gender-identity published in the last decade. Every contributor in Abram’s book provides an engaging, erudite and illuminating perspective on the power of American’s women’s humor across the centuries.” (Gina Barreca, author of They Used To Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, USA) “The Medusa is surely laughing with joy to see the robust array of women whom Sabrina Fuchs Abrams and her contributors have added to the canon of American humorists. American women since the 1890s have found myriad ways to talk comically back to a culture that often declared them incapable of humor. Students will love Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers for its funny examples and theoretical explanations; scholars will find the footnotes invaluable.” (Judith Yaross Lee, Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies & Charles E. Zumkehr Professor of Rhetoric, Ohio University, Ohio, USA) From the Back Cover This collection  is the first to focus on the iconoclastic and transformative power of American female humorists. It explores the work of authors and comediennes such as Samantha Bee, Amy Schumer, Lucille Clifton, Constance Rourke, Carolyn Wells, and Lynne Tillman while drawing on various theories of humor including the incongruity superiority/disparagement, and relief theories. The chapters draw from the experiences of women from a variety of racial, class, and gender identities and encompass a variety of genres and comedic forms including poetry, fiction, prose, autobiography, graphic memoir, comedic performance, and new media. Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers will appeal to a general educated readership as well as to those interested in women’s and gender studies, humor studies, urban studies, American literature and cultural studies, and media studies. About the Author Sabrina Fuchs Abrams is Associate Professor of English in the School for Graduate Studies at the State University of New York, Empire State College. She is the author of Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics and the Postwar Intellectual and editor of Literature of New York. She is currently working on a book, The Politics of Humor: New York Women of Wit, and is founder and chair of the Mary McCarthy Society.