Part I: Hearing the Room
Unit 1: The Microphone and the Public Witness
Monday August 24 and Wednesday August 26
What changes when a comedian's first responsibility is witness rather than reassurance?
Content notice: Charged comic material and racial content studied as assigned text
This course studies controversial stand-up comedy in its full context. You will hear and read material some audiences found offensive. We name the type of material so you can prepare; we do not decide its meaning for you.
Orientation
This Seminar reads comedy the way we read any serious text: not to decide quickly whether it is good or bad, but to ask what happened among the performer, the work, the audience, history, and the interpreter.
What this Unit teaches
- course terms and ethical ground rules
- the difference between hearing, agreeing, and interpreting
- hermeneutics as attention to performer, audience, history, bodies, institutions, and social location
- public controversy as diagnostic
- Charles Long on naming and signification
- Howard Thurman on inward life
- the Introduction's distinction between 8:46 as witness and The Closer as contested relation
The rest of this Unit unlocks when you enroll.
The orientation above stays open. The Monday and Wednesday work, the readings, the Labs, and the deliverable unlock with an account, an active Studio subscription, and your course access code.
Get started