This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
In a series of weekly seminars, the students will engage in debates about theories of comedy, current debates about stand-up performance, the history of stand-up (particularly recent British stand-up since the birth of alternative comedy in 1979), the profession of stand-up, and the way that the live comedy scene is organised. They will also have a regular timetabled slot in the Templeman library, in which they will work with materials from BSUCA, supervised by an archivist from Special Collections and Archives. They will work autonomously on negotiated archive projects, which might involve, for example, generating metadata on audio-visual recordings, writing blog posts on items from BSUCA, etc.
2 hour seminars plus 2 hour archive sessions per week
100% Coursework: 3000 word Essay (50%); Portfolio (50%)
• Allen, Tony (2002) Attitude: Wanna Make Something Of It?, Glastonbury: Gothic Image.
• Brodie, Ian (2008) 'Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy', Ethnologies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 153-80.
• Carroll, Noel (2014), Humour: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: OUP.
• Chow, Broderick (2008) ‘Situations, Happenings, Gatherings, Laughter: Emergent British Stand-Up Comedy in Sociopolitical Context’, Theatre Symposium, vol. 16, no. 1, 121-133.
• Double, Oliver (2014) Getting the Joke: the Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy (second edition), London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
• Douglas, Mary (1999) ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (second edition), London & New York: Routledge, 146-64.
• Friedman, Sam (2014), Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour, Abingdon & New York: Routledge.
• Lee, Stewart (2010) How I Escaped my Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber & Faber.
• Mintz, L.E. (1985) ‘Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation’, American Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring, pp.71-80
• Molineux, Christopher (2016) ‘Life memory archive translation performance memory archive life: textual self-documentation in stand-up comedy’, Comedy Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2-12.
• Morreall, John (1987), The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, Albany: SUNY Press.
• Quirk, Sophie (2015) Why Stand-Up Matters: How Comedians Manipulate and Influence, London & New York: Bloomsbury.
• Sayle, Alexei (2016) Thatcher Stole my Trousers, London & New York: Bloomsbury.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Exercise independent thinking and to demonstrate skills of problem-solving and project planning.
- Source, organise, articulate and disseminate advanced ideas appropriately and effectively, in a way that advances knowledge and adds value.
- Present complex thoughts, arguments, and data in coherent and lucid ways, both verbally and in writing, pitched appropriately to a range of audiences.
- Identify, create, address and successfully execute complex tasks and problems to a professional level.
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