Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers

This collection is the first to focus on the transgressive and transformative power of American female humorists. It explores the work of authors and comediennes such as Carolyn Wells, Lucille Clifton, Mary McCarthy, Lynne Tillman, Constance Rourke, Roz Chast, Amy Schumer and Samantha Bee, and the ways in which their humor challenges gendered norms and assumptions through the use of irony, satire, parody, and wit. The chapters draw from the experiences of women from a variety of racial, class, and gender identities and encompass a variety of genres and comedic forms including poetry, fiction, prose, autobiography, graphic memoir, comedic performance, and new media. Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers will appeal to a general educated readership as well as to those interested in women’s and gender studies, humor studies, urban studies, American literature and cultural studies, and media studies.

.-1 Introduction- No Joke: Transgressive Humor of American Women Writers.- 2: ‘To amuse intelligently and cleverly’: Carolyn Wells and Literary Parody.- 3: From Headlines to Punchlines: Suffragist Humorists in the Popular Press.- 4: The Scholarly Transgressions of Constance Rourke.- 5: Embattled Embodiment: The Sexual/ Intellectual Politics of Humor in Mary McCarthy’s Writing.- 6: Humor as Clap Back in Lucille Clifton's Poetry.-7: Fidel and Gummy Bears?: Transgressive Humor in Contemporary Latina Fiction.- 8: Humor, Gentrification, and the Conservation of Downtown New York in Lynne.- 9: Funny Women: Political Transgressions and Celebrity Autobiography.-10: Roz Chast:  From Whimsy to Transgression.- 11: ‘My Mom’s a Cunt’: New Bawds Ride the Fourth Wave.-12: Dueling Discourses: The Female Comic’s Double-Bind in the New Media Age.