Comedy 
-
SOURCE: Slate
12/31/2022
What Happened to Pieing Powerful People in the Face?
by Rossi Anastopoulo
For three decades beginning in the 1970s, political groups used the time-honored comedy move as a way of humbling the powerful and (mostly) non-violently resisting bigotry. Why have public pieings nearly vanished?
-
SOURCE: Vox
12/20/2022
Are Conservatives Really Pulling Ahead in the Comedy Race?
Does a ratings boost for Greg Gutfeld's late-night show mean that today's conservatives are the funny ones and liberals are too "woke" to laugh? Answering the question means looking past party loyalty to ask what makes humor, says humor historian Teresa Prados-Terreira.
-
SOURCE: NPR
10/4/2022
The Writer of "The Onion" SCOTUS Brief Takes Parody Seriously
The satirical newspaper's brief employed the rhetorical mode to lay out the free speech implications of a case involving a man who faced retaliatory arrest for making a parody facebook account for his local police department.
-
SOURCE: Forward
11/30/2021
Mel Brooks Delivers 500 Pages on His Favorite Subject – Himself
"The stuff that hasn’t been public, or at least is tough to find, makes the book worthwhile."
-
SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
3/3/2021
‘We Had a Little Real Estate Problem’: Native American Comedians Get Their Due | Book review
Charlie Hill’s TV debut, making him the first Indigenous comedian in prime time, is one of the milestones that Kliph Nesteroff chronicles in We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, an illuminating and stereotype-busting history of Native Americans and comedy.
-
SOURCE: The Intercept
7/4/2020
Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR And The New Deal
Reiner’s brother saw a small ad in the New York Daily News about free acting lessons being offered in lower Manhattan by the Works Progress Administration. Reiner had never contemplated acting before in his life, but his brother insisted, so he went.
-
SOURCE: Perspectives on History
5/13/2020
Finding the Funny: Historians’ Lectures Provide Material for Improv Comedians
A Philadelphia improv comedy group has been inviting historians to collaborate for years in performances mixing historical lecture and improvised reenactments.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
5/11/2020
In Jerry Stiller, the Rage of Jewish Fathers Found a Hilarious Outlet
Jerry Stiller mined a rich comedic vein that was rooted in cultural conflict between Jewish immigrants and their American-born children.
News
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
- Stanley Engerman, Co-Author of Controversial History of American Slavery, Dies at 87
- Professor Helps Rescue "Lost" Asian American Silent Film
- Canada Day Festivities Spark Controversy over National History
- German Government Panel of Historians Begins Inquiry into 1972 Munich Olympics Killings