Comic Lives

Comic Lives examines the dynamic intersection of life narrative and comedy within the theoretical and methodological frameworks of auto/biography studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

List of contents

Introduction - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to This Issue: Comedy and Life Narratives 1. Generous Laughs: The Comedic Plentitude of Maria Bamford 2. Confronting Apartheid's Revenants: Trevor Noah's Born a Crime and/as Traumedy 3. No Joke, This Actually Happened: A Not Unfunny Interview with Danielle Seid 4. Okay to Laugh? Trauma, Memoir, and Teaching the Podcast Mum Says My Memoir Is a Lie 5. Getting the Joke: Self -Deprecating Humor in Anh Do's The Happiest Refugee 6. Consequences of Laughter: Reflections on Performing Comedic Self-Deprecation and Reacting to Deprecation in General

About the author

Laurie McNeill is Professor of Teaching in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia. She is co-author (with Sonja Boon, Candida Rifkind, and Julie Rak) of The Routledge Introduction to Auto/biography in Canada (2022), and co-editor, with Kate Douglas, of Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives (Routledge, 2017), and, with John David Zuern, Online Lives 2.0, a special issue of the journal Biography (2015).
John David Zuern is Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i at M¿noa and a co-editor of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly. His work on auto/biography has appeared in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, European Journal of Life Writing, and Life Writing. With Laurie McNeill, he is co-editor of Online Lives 2.0, a special issue of Biography.

Product details

• Authors: Laurie (University of British Columbia Mcneill
• Assisted by: Laurie McNeill (Editor), John David Zuern (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 27.06.2025
• EAN: 9781041002222
• ISBN: 978-1-0-4100222-2
• No. of pages: 124
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History; Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Media science; History, Media Studies, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General, PERFORMING ARTS / Comedy, Theatre Studies, Humanities, Literature: history & criticism, Performance Art, Literature: history and criticism, Museology & heritage studies, Museology and heritage studies, autobiography;comedy;life narrative;testimony;trauma