Can I read Laughing Mad : The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America on EtoBox?

Laughing Mad : The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America by Bambi Haggins; American Council of Learned Societies is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Laughing Mad : The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America about?

Winner of the 2008 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award Prior to the civil rights movement, comedians performed for audiences that were clearly delineated by race. Black comedians performed for black audiences and white comedians performed for whites. Yet during the past forty-five years, black comics have become progressively more central to mainstream culture. In Laughing Mad , Bambi Haggins looks at how this transition occurred in a variety of media and shows how this integration has paved the way for black comedians and their audiences to affect each other. Historically, African American performers have been able to use comedy as a pedagogic tool, interjecting astute observations about race relations while the audience is laughing. And yet, Haggins makes the convincing argument that the potential of African American comedy remains fundamentally unfulfilled as the performance of blackness continues to be made culturally digestible for mass consumption. Rather than presenting biographies of individual performers, Haggins focuses on the ways in which the comic persona is constructed and changes across media, from stand-up, to the small screen, to film. She examines the comic televis

Author

Bambi Haggins; American Council of Learned Societies

Publisher

New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press

Published

2007

Language

EN

ISBN

9780813542652

Subjects

Science, Sociology, History