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Scribner Seminar, London FYE 2025

Comics, Minstrels, Satirists & Hacks: Locating British Humor

Beck Krefting, 
Professor of American Studies and Director of the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning  

This course meanders through the history of comedic cultural production in England taking place in music halls, vaudeville theaters, working men’s clubs, street performances, television, and stand-up comedy clubs, examining how comedy is influenced and shaped by shifts in social consciousness, changing economy, industrial and technological innovations, political events, and global conflict and relations. Along the way, we will watch lots of stand-up, including live performances, as we unpack the history, theories, and functions of laughter and humor and examine styles of comic performance—shock comedy, charged humor, self-deprecating humor, satire/political humor, absurdist humor and amused racial contempt—from contemporary UK comics such as Suzy Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Eliza Smurthwaite, Daniel Sloss, Humza Arshad, Stewart Lee, Gina Yashere, Mae Martin, Bridget Christie, James Acaster, Catherine Tate and many more. Reading popular discourses as critical texts shaping human behavior, attitudes and consumptive practices, we will compare shifting ideas about political correctness and humor from the mid-twentieth century to the Digital Age. The city of London will be our playground and roaming classroom as we visit historical cultural sites (some still active) for comic performances like Wilton’s Music Hall, Theatre Royal – Drury Lane, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, and popular urban sites for street performances like Covent Garden. The course will culminate with students offering a research-based original walking tour of historical sites where comedy flourished in London over the past three centuries. Wear sensible shoes and get ready to laugh. 

is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning at Skidmore. Experience as a professional stand-up comic, improv actor, and director of comic theater for adolescents in Washington DC led to a research focus in comedy studies wherein she routinely examines the histories and historiographies of stand-up comedy with a focus on social justice. On that topic, she has published a monograph alongside over two dozen journal articles and chapters in edited collections. She has presented research nationally and internationally most recently at Dresden University of Technology in Germany and the University of Szeged in Hungary. She has introduced and moderated events for the likes of Gloria Steinem, Michael Ian Black, and Roz Chast, and continues to make people chuckle performing stand-up comedy in the Capital Region.