Still working through this so please bear with me J
For the final paper, I’m interested in exploring common
tropes around comedy and racial experiences. I would like to discuss the sort
of coming of age narratives surrounding comedians’ interactions with their
racial identities. This was partially inspired by my interest in children/young
people’s first lessons in race, so to speak (when do we find out what race is,
or specifically how we are racially identified/othered by outsiders?). By
examining the works of several comedians, I hope to uncover the key sites where
race and comedy collide as well as identify possible universal experiences with
race. I want to see how comedians take moments that might otherwise be painful
or isolating and turn them into comedy. Hopefully by the time I’ve finished I
will have learned what allows certain groups to participate in racial/ethnic
comedy successfully while others cannot.
Possible Primary Sources:
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? – Mindy Kaling
Pryor Convictions, And Other Life Sentences – Richard Pryor
Russell Peters clips, Chris Rock clips
Possible Secondary sources:
Children’s Developmental Understanding of Ethnicity and Race
– Stephen M. Quintana
Stand-Up Comedy as a Social and Cultural Mediation –
Lawrence E. Mintz
Dear Megan,
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating topic. I particularly like your idea of examining coming of age narratives that discuss early experiences with one's racial identity.
As we discussed, this project will be easier to research if you expand it beyond the stories of comedians. This will open up numerous memoirs that you can draw from -- Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, James McBride, The Color of Water, etc. You could still discuss comedians, but you wouldn't have to rely on them exclusively. You could use comedians' experiences as an introduction or a conclusion since comedians often recount their experiences in exaggerated ways. This might allow you to introduce some of the key issues around coming of age stories, but then you could follow with a more detailed analysis of other memoirs.
There is an essay in a collection by Robert Stepto called, "W. E. B. Du Bois, Barack Obama, and the Search for Race, Schoolhouse Blues," that might be very helpful to you. The essay begins, "The schoolhouse episode is a staple event in African American narratives no doubt because it is remembered or imagined as a formative first scene of racial self-awareness." If the library does not have a copy of the book, Robert Stepto, A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama, you are welcome to borrow it from me.
You're off to a great start! Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Very best,
Prof H