Comedy and the Politics of Representation

Helen Davies is Head of English and Creative Writing at Newman University, UK. She is the author of Gender and Ventriloquism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction: Passionate Puppets (Palgrave, 2012) and Neo-Victorian Freakery: The Cultural Afterlife of the Victorian Freak Show (Palgrave, 2015).Sarah Ilott is Lecturer in Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of New Postcolonial British Genres: Shifting the Boundaries (Palgrave, 2015).

• 1. Introduction: Mocking the Weak? Contexts, Theories, Politcs, Helen Davies and Sarah Ilott.- 2. Taking Liberties? Free Speech, Multiculturalism and the Ethics of Satire, Anshuman A. Mondal.- 3. Openness, Otherness, and Expertise: Uncertainty and Trust in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Rob Hawkes.- 4. British Multiculturalism, Romantic Comedy, and the Lie of Social Unification, Sarah Ilott.- 5. Parodying Racial Passing in Chappelle’s Show and Key & Peele, Janine Bradbury.- 6. Blackness and Banal Whiteness: Abjection and Identity in the Italian Christmas Comedy, Alan O’Leary.- 7. Sexual and National Difference in the high-speed, popular surrealism of Tommy Handley and Ronald Frankau’s double acts, 1929-1936, Neil Washbourne.- 8. From Terry and June to Terry and Julian: June Whitfield and the British Suburban Sitcom, Rosie White.- 9. Saintly Cretins and Ugly Buglys: Laughing at Victorian Disability in Hunderby, Helen Davies.- 10. Standing Up to False Binaries in Humour and Autism: A Dialogue, Kate Fox.- 11. Comedy and the Representation of the British Working Class from On the Buses to This is England ’90, Tracy Casling.- 12. Theorising Post-Socialist Sitcom: Imported Form, Vernacular Humour and Taste Boundaries on the Global Periphery, Dejan Jontes and Andreja Trdina.- 13. Smile, Hitler? Nazism and Comedy in Popular Culture, Jason Lee.- 14. POTUS Stand-up: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Sheryl Tuttle Ross.