Laughter in the Archives: Jackie "Moms" Mabley -- I Love You Bitches Back: Spect-Actors and Affective Freedom in I Coulda Been Your Cellmate! -- The Black Queer Citizenship of Wanda Sykes -- Contemporary Truth-Tellers: A New Cohort of Black Feminist Comics -- Conclusion.

Kohen assembles America's most prominent comediennes to piece together an oral history about the revolution that happened to (and by) women in American comedy.

For fans of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer—and every other “funny woman”—comes a candid feminist comedy manifesto exploring the sisterhood between women’s comedy and women’s liberation. “I’m not funny at all. What I am is brave.” —Lucille Ball From female pop culture powerhouses dominating the entertainment landscape to memoirs from today’s most vocal feminist comediennes shooting up the bestseller lists, women in comedy have never been more influential. Marking this cultural shift, The Girl in the Show provides an in-depth exploration of how comedy and feminism have grown hand in hand to give women a stronger voice in the ongoing fight for equality. From I Love Lucy to SNL to today’s rising cable and web-series stars, Anna Fields’ entertaining retrospective combines amusing and honest personal narratives with the historical, political, and cultural contexts of the feminist movement. With interview subjects like Abbi Jacobson, Molly Shannon, Mo Collins, and Lizz Winstead among others—as well as actresses, stand-up comics, writers, producers, and female comedy troupes—Fields shares true stories of wit and heroism from some of our most treasured (and under-represented) artists. At its heart, The Girl in the Show captures the urgency of our continued struggle towards equality, allowing the reader to both revel in—and rebel against—our collective ideas of “women’s comedy.”

From dour old women to buzzkills who can't take a joke, the stereotype of the humourless feminist has repeatedly been deployed to derail and delegitimize the women's rights movement. This collection skips the tired debates that ask whether feminists can be funny—we know the answer to this already—to instead investigate contemporary expressions and functions of humour within international feminist movements and communities. This interdisciplinary volume showcases critical analyses of cultural texts and events, personal accounts of producing and encountering feminist humour, and creative interruptions that pair laughter with insight. As a whole, this work seeks to sideline caricatures of the humourless feminist by promoting a vision of a diverse movement vibrant with innovative, generous, threatening, and, ultimately, triumphant laughter.

An examination of comedy and feminism in the works of early women British novelists.

An academic study of stand-up comedy performed by females. This will aid in the understanding of power structures in our society.

Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights of London identifies the eighteenth-century comedic stage as a key site of feminist critique, practice, and experimentation. While the history of feminism and comedy is undeniably vexed, by focusing on five women playwrights of the latter half of the eighteenth century--Catherine Clive, Frances Brooke, Frances Burney, Hannah Cowley, and Elizabeth Inchbald--this book demonstrates that stage comedy was crucial to these women’s professional success in a male-dominated industry and reveals a unifying thread of feminist critique that connects their works. Though male detractors denied women’s comic ability throughout the era, eighteenth-century women playwrights were on the cutting edge of comedy and their work had important feminist influence that can be traced to today’s stages and screens.