How the Other Half Laughs
How the Other Half Laughs

Author: Jean Lee Cole

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2020-01-27

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1496826566

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2021 Honorable Mention Recipient of the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society Taking up the role of laughter in society, How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895–1920 examines an era in which the US population was becoming increasingly multiethnic and multiracial. Comic artists and writers, hoping to create works that would appeal to a diverse audience, had to formulate a method for making the “other half” laugh. In magazine fiction, vaudeville, and the comic strip, the oppressive conditions of the poor and the marginalized were portrayed unflinchingly, yet with a distinctly comic sensibility that grew out of caricature and ethnic humor. Author Jean Lee Cole analyzes Progressive Era popular culture, providing a critical angle to approach visual and literary humor about ethnicity—how avenues of comedy serve as expressions of solidarity, commiseration, and empowerment. Cole’s argument centers on the comic sensibility, which she defines as a performative act that fosters feelings of solidarity and community among the marginalized. Cole stresses the connections between the worlds of art, journalism, and literature and the people who produced them—including George Herriman, R. F. Outcault, Rudolph Dirks, Jimmy Swinnerton, George Luks, and William Glackens—and traces the form’s emergence in the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal-American and how it influenced popular fiction, illustration, and art. How the Other Half Laughs restores the newspaper comic strip to its rightful place as a transformative element of American culture at the turn into the twentieth century.

How the Other Half Laughs
How the Other Half Laughs

Author: Jean Lee Cole

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2020-01-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 149682654X

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2021 Honorable Mention Recipient of the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society Taking up the role of laughter in society, How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895–1920 examines an era in which the US population was becoming increasingly multiethnic and multiracial. Comic artists and writers, hoping to create works that would appeal to a diverse audience, had to formulate a method for making the “other half” laugh. In magazine fiction, vaudeville, and the comic strip, the oppressive conditions of the poor and the marginalized were portrayed unflinchingly, yet with a distinctly comic sensibility that grew out of caricature and ethnic humor. Author Jean Lee Cole analyzes Progressive Era popular culture, providing a critical angle to approach visual and literary humor about ethnicity—how avenues of comedy serve as expressions of solidarity, commiseration, and empowerment. Cole’s argument centers on the comic sensibility, which she defines as a performative act that fosters feelings of solidarity and community among the marginalized. Cole stresses the connections between the worlds of art, journalism, and literature and the people who produced them—including George Herriman, R. F. Outcault, Rudolph Dirks, Jimmy Swinnerton, George Luks, and William Glackens—and traces the form’s emergence in the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal-American and how it influenced popular fiction, illustration, and art. How the Other Half Laughs restores the newspaper comic strip to its rightful place as a transformative element of American culture at the turn into the twentieth century.

Composing Ourselves
Composing Ourselves

Author: Dorothy Chansky

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780809326495

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When movies replaced theater in the early twentieth century, live drama was wide open to reform. A rebellion against commercialism, called the Little Theatre movement, promoted the notion that theatre is a valuable form of self-expression. Composing Ourselves argues that the movement was a national phenomenon that resulted in lasting ideas for serious theatre that are now ordinary parts of the American cultural landscape.

The Immigrant Scene
The Immigrant Scene

Author: Sabine Haenni

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0816649812

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Yiddish melodramas about the tribulations of immigration. German plays about alpine tourism. Italian vaudeville performances. Rubbernecking tours of Chinatown. In the New York City of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these seemingly disparate leisure activities played similar roles: mediating the vast cultural, demographic, and social changes that were sweeping the nation's largest city. In The Immigrant Scene, Sabine Haenni reveals how theaters in New York created ethnic entertainment that shaped the culture of the United States in the early twentieth century. Considering the relationship between leisure and mass culture, The Immigrant Scene develops a new picture of the metropolis in which the movement of people, objects, and images on-screen and in the street helped residents negotiate the complexities of modern times. In analyzing how communities engaged with immigrant theaters and the nascent film culture in New York City, Haenni traces the ways in which performance and cinema provided virtual mobility--ways of navigating the socially complex metropolis--and influenced national ideas of immigration, culture, and diversity in surprising and lasting ways.

Here in This Island We Arrived
Here in This Island We Arrived

Author: Elisabeth H. Kinsley

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 0271084219

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In this book, Elisabeth H. Kinsley weaves the stories of racially and ethnically distinct Shakespeare theatre scenes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Manhattan into a single cultural history, revealing how these communities interacted with one another and how their work influenced ideas about race and belonging in the United States during a time of unprecedented immigration. As Progressive Era reformers touted the works of Shakespeare as an “antidote” to the linguistic and cultural mixing of American society, and some reformers attempted to use the Bard’s plays to “Americanize” immigrant groups on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, immigrants from across Europe appropriated Shakespeare for their own ends. Kinsley uses archival material such as reform-era handbooks, theatre posters, playbills, programs, sheet music, and reviews to demonstrate how, in addition to being a source of cultural capital, authority, and resistance for these communities, Shakespeare’s plays were also a site of cultural exchange. Performances of Shakespeare occasioned nuanced social encounters between New York’s empowered and marginalized groups and influenced sociocultural ideas about what Shakespeare, race, and national belonging should and could mean for Americans. Timely and immensely readable, this book explains how ideas about cultural belonging formed and transformed within a particular human community at a time of heightened demographic change. Kinsley’s work will be welcomed by anyone interested in the formation of national identity, immigrant communities, and the history of the theatre scene in New York and the rest of the United States.

The Laughing Monsters
The Laughing Monsters

Author: Denis Johnson

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0374709238

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Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game. Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

Laughing Through the Ugly Cry
Laughing Through the Ugly Cry

Author: Dawn Barton

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1400217776

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Do you believe that joy is a choice? Dawn Barton does. She's an upbeat Southerner with good hair and a successful business background, but she's had more heartache than most of us can imagine. Laughing Through the Ugly Cry is a collection of honest and sometimes raw stories. Dawn throws an arm around readers as she brings them along on her journey through the loss of a child, divorce, cancer, rape, the death of her only sibling, her husband's substance abuse, and finding her way back to Jesus in the middle of it all. Dawn shares her personal story to show readers how to find happiness and purpose even in the darkest of days. By laughing through the ugly cry, you will discover how to: Shut down negative feelings causing you to feel inadequate Identify the pros despite how challenging the cons may seem Embrace joy wherever you can find it Learn how to be honest with yourself and process grief in a healthy way Dawn writes, "If more women were open about just how difficult our lives feel and how hard we are on ourselves, I think we'd learn to relax a little and give ourselves the grace God gives us every day." Laughing Through the Ugly Cry is great for: Women of any age seeking comfort, encouragement, and inspiration Book clubs and girls' nights--Dawn poses thoughtful group questions to support meaningful conversations about growth and joy

She Laughs
She Laughs

Author: Carolanne Miljavac

Publisher: Barbour Publishing

Published: 2020-01-01

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1643525654

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SHE LAUGHS! In the face of. . .Poverty. Grief. Brokenness. Disaster. Hopeless Situations. Life’s Struggles. And you can too! Join CA Miljavac on a journey of joy. She believes with all her heart that laughter is a gift, providing a sliver of distraction from whatever struggle you might be facing. . .relief when you need rescuing. . .hope in the midst of hardship. Though her life has been dotted with disaster, it’s through laughter that she found the strength and courage to persevere. . .joy for the journey. And she’ll help you discover all the ways laughter can carry you through your very own painful situations. In ten laugh-till-you-cry chapters, Miljavac shares how laughter has been an essential and valuable part of her own healing, plus hilarious true stories will help you get started on the path to a life of peace and joy.