Women Comedians in Postwar U.S. Stand-Up Circuitry
| dc.contributor.author | Pozsonyi, Kriszta | |
| dc.contributor.chair | Salvato, Nicholas | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Sheppard, Samantha | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Haenni, Sabine | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-03-31T16:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-03-31T16:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2022-12 | |
| dc.description | 168 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation investigates how women performers participated in stand-up comedy in the postwar period and focuses on the role television played in both the emergence of stand-up and gender inequity therein. I use the concept of circuitry, decidedly rooted in its vaudevillian meaning, as the lens for my study, and I focus on “short-circuiting” as the systemic modes of shutting women out from the circuitries of live and televised stand-up, as well as from our historical accounts. Thus, the dissertation builds on feminist media historiography to make an intervention into our understanding of stand-up, its early history, and gender inequity. Each of the three chapters focuses on a case study of a comedian in the era, who has mostly disappeared from our accounts of early stand-up. First, I discuss Jadin Wong, often referred to as the first Chinese American stand-up comedian, and I highlight how we can read her comic material as a continuation and adaptation of her work as a dancer in the Chop Suey Circuit. In the second chapter, I highlight how Sally Marr’s own comic career and contributions as a collaborator were sidelined due to her being the mother of comedian Lenny Bruce. In the third, I focus on Jean Carroll, who—unlike Wong or Marr—performed her own stand-up act on television as early as the 1940s and remained one of the most televised women performers over the next two decades. Through archival and digital research, I offer close readings of the comedians’ television and film appearances and the print circulation of their written materials, and I trace their performance routes via newspaper sources. In doing so, I highlight the significance of the performers’ gradual, trans-modal transition into stand-up comedy, and I demonstrate contemporary sources’ consistent undermining of the comedy in women’s performances. Thus, I argue that we need to use the definition of stand-up comedy with flexibility to better understand and account for women performers’ contributions. Similarly, I show the significance of performers’ connections, relations, networks, and the many (often gendered) forms of labor that together create and shape stand-up performance spaces. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.7298/p2h8-nx41 | |
| dc.identifier.other | Pozsonyi_cornellgrad_0058_13433 | |
| dc.identifier.other | http://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:13433 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1813/112965 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | * |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | * |
| dc.subject | Comedy | en_US |
| dc.subject | Gender | en_US |
| dc.subject | Stand-Up | en_US |
| dc.subject | Television | en_US |
| dc.subject | The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel | en_US |
| dc.subject | Vaudeville | en_US |
| dc.title | Women Comedians in Postwar U.S. Stand-Up Circuitry | en_US |
| dc.type | dissertation or thesis | en_US |
| dcterms.license | https://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810.2 | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Performing and Media Arts | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Cornell University | |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctor of Philosophy | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph. D., Performing and Media Arts |
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