This course explores the "performance" of Brooklyn through
humor. We will attempt to answer some of the following
questions: Why do we associate Brooklyn with humor? And is
that in fact true: do we associate Brooklyn with
humor? What is
funny about Brooklyn? How is this humor expressed? In other
words, how
is this humor
expressed through popular culture (films, television, standup
comedy, one-person shows, popular literature)? How is this
humor expressed in
personal experience narratives in which Brooklyn plays a major
role? What significance do race and ethnicity have within the
"performance" of Brooklyn? Is Woody Allen
that much funnier because he comes from Brooklyn? What does
a Brooklyn background signify to Allen's construction of
his Jewish character? How has/does
humor help us understand the ways in which ethnic and racial
communities are constructed, positioned, perceived? Especially
those in Brooklyn? How does humor
bridge different ethnic and racial communties? What role does
class play in the performance of Brooklyn humor? How do
Brooklynites "perform" Brooklyn versus non-Brooklynites? We will look at how Brooklyn is performed in
standup comedy, on stage, in film, in the popular novel, and in
personal
experience narratives. We will then look at the specific
humor elements employed in the "performance" of Brooklyn and its
particular groups.
The first three weeks will be devoted to humor theory. We will
begin by looking at what's funny in general, move to humor in
America, and then to humor in the urban landscape. I have not
found any article or essay that deals with Brooklyn humor
specifically, but I hope that by the end of the course, we will
all be able to write one.
Weeks Four, Five, and Six will be spent exploring Brooklyn's
history through places, people, and specific
representations of Brooklyn. Much of this history
will be read through oral narratives which moves us into the
next section, personal experience narratives. For Week Seven the
class will look at different interpretations and functions of
the personal experience narrative. In Week Eight, students will
provide and workshop their own narrative.
The last part of the course looks at Brooklyn through standup, theatre, film, television, and the
popular novel. On the last day of class, we will hold an
academic conference where the students will present on a
Brooklyn
topic of their choice, one which I hope will help answer the
questions: "Is Brooklyn funny? How is it
funny? and What does Brooklyn humor teach us about
ethnicity, race, and class?"
WEEK 1: Introduction / What's Funny in General?
READINGS:
Bergson, Henri. "Laughter." In Comedy: A Critical
Anthology. Edited by Robert W. Corrigan. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1971.
Cox, Samuel S. "Chapter One: Humor in General." In Why We
Laugh. Bronx, NY: Benjamin Blom, Inc.,
1969.
Freud, Sigmund. Wit and Its Relation to the
Unconscious. Translated by A. A. Brill. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1993, pages TBA.
Friend, Tad. "What's So Funny?" The New Yorker.
(November 11,
2002): 78-93.
Mintz, Lawrence. "Introduction: Theory and
Methodology." In Culture
and Society in American Humor. University of Maryland,
Department of American Studies, Course Packet 629K, Spring
2003.
Oring, Elliot. "Appropriate Incongruity." In Jokes and Their
Relations. Lexington,
Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992.
WEEK 2: What's Funny in America?
READINGS (four of):
Bederman, Gail. "Chapter 5 and Conclusion." Manliness and
Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995.
Boskin, Joseph, ed. "African American Humor: Resistance
and Retaliation." In The Humor Prism in
20th-Century America. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1997.
Bradley, Sculley. "Our Native Humor." In The Humor Prism in
20th-Century America. Edited by Joseph
Boskin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Cox, Samuel S. "Chapter Two: American Humor in
Particular," "Chapter Three: American Humor---Its
Exaggerations, Etc.," "Chapter Four: American Humor---Its
Extravagance in
Opinion and Expression." In Why We Laugh. Bronx,
NY: Benjamin Blom,
Inc., 1969.
Dudden, Arthur Power, ed. "Introduction: American Humor." In
American Humor. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hansen, Arlen J. "Entropy and Transformation: Two Types of
American Humor." In The Humor Prism in
20th-Century America. Edited by Joseph
Boskin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Oring, Elliott. "The
People of the Joke: On the
Conceptualization of a Jewish Humor." In The Humor Prism in
20th-Century America. Edited by Joseph
Boskin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Rubin, Jr., Louis D. "The Great American Joke." In What's So
Funny?: Humor in American Culture. Edited by Nancy
A. Walker. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1998.
Turner, Frederick Jackon. "The Significance of the Frontier." In
Frontier and Section: Selected Essays of Frederick Jackson
Turner. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1938.
Walker, Nancy, ed.: "Introduction: What Is Humor? Why American
Humor?" In What's So Funny?: Humor in
American Culture. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources,
Inc., 1998.
WEEK 3: What's Funny in the City?
READINGS:
Boskin, Joseph, ed. "The Urban Landscape." In The Humor
Prism in 20th-Century America. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1997.
Boskin, Joseph, and Joseph Dorinson. "Ethnic Humor: Subversion
and Survival." In What's So
Funny?: Humor in American Culture. Edited by Nancy
A. Walker. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1998.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. "Urban Legends." In What's So
Funny?: Humor in American Culture. Edited by Nancy
A. Walker. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1998.
Watkins, Mel. "Vaudeville and Black Humor. " In
On the Real side: A History of African American Comedy.
Chicago, IL: Independent Publishing Group, 1999.
WEEK 4: Who and What is Brooklyn? Part I
READINGS:
Hayden, Dolores. "Claiming Urban Landscapes as Public
History." In The Power of Place. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999.
Miska, Maxine, and I. Sheldon Posen. Tradition and Community in the Urban Neighborhood: Making Brooklyn Home. New
York: Brooklyn Educational & Cultural Alliance, 1983.
Ryden, Kent. "Foreward, Preface, Prologue,
and Chapter 1." In Folklore, Writing,
and the Sense of Place. Iowa: University of Iowa Press,
1993.
Von Hoffman, Alexander. House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America's Urban Neighborhoods. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Oxford University Press, 2003, pages TBA.
Weld, Ralph Foster. Brooklyn is America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1950.
WEEK 5: Who and What is Brooklyn? Part II
READINGS (four of):
Barreca, Regina. Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2000, pages TBA.
Botkin, B. A. New York City Folklore. New York: Random
House, 1956.
Cousin, Linda, ed.
Black and in Brooklyn: Creators and Creations. Brooklyn, NY: Universal
Black Writer Press, 1983.
Della Femina, Jerry, and Charles Sopkin.
An Italian Grows in Brooklyn. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1978.
Foner, Nancy, ed. New Immigrants in New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
Frommer, Myrna Katz, and Harvey Frommer. It Happened in
Brooklyn: 1940s, '50s,
and '60s. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.
Iglesias, Cesar Andreu, ed. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New
York. Translated by Juan Flores. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984.
Kwong, Peter. The New Chinatown. New York: Noonday, 1987.
Labov, William. The Social Stratification of English in
New York City. Washington D.C.: Center for Applied
Linguistics,
1966, pages TBA.
Linneman, William R. "Immigrant Stereotypes, 1880-1900." In
Studies in American
Humor 1 (1974): 22-30.
Moore, Deborah Dash. At Home in America: Second Generation
New York Jews. New York: Columbia University Press,
1981.
Ridge, John T. The Flatbush Irish. Brooklyn, New York: The Ancient Order of Hibernians, 1983.
Schiavelli, Vincent.
Bruculinu, America: Remembrances of Scicilian-American Brooklyn told in stories and recipes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
WEEK 6: Who and What is
Brooklyn? Part III
READINGS (two of):
DiFazio, William.
Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvy, 1985.
Prince, Carl E.
Brooklyn's Dodgers: The Bums, the Borough and the Best of Baseball, 1947-1957. New York: Oxford University Press,
1996.
McCullough, Edo.
Good Old Coney Island.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2000.
Weinstein, Stephen F. "The Nickel Empire: Coney Island and the Creation of Urban Seaside Resorts in the United States." Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia University, 1984.
Tratenberg, Alan. Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
WEEK 7: Personal Experience
Narratives: Theory
READINGS:
Allen, Barbara. "Personal Experience Narratives: Use and Meaning in Interaction." In Folk Groups and Folk Genres. Edited by
Elliot
Oring. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989.
Cody, Cornelia. "What's the Joke?: Humor Elements in Three New
York
City Personal Experience Narratives." Paper presented at the
Conference of the
International Society for Humor Studies. Dijon,
France: 2004.
Pinsker, Sanford. "The Urban Tall Tale: Frontier Humor in a
Contemporary
Key." In Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary
American
Literature.
Edited by Sarah Blacher Cohen. Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1978.
Stahl, Sandra Dolby."Introduction, Chapters One and Two."
Literary Folkloristics and
the Personal
Narrative. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1989.
Wachs, Eleanor."Introduction and Chapter One." Crime-Victim
Stories: New York City's Urban
Folklore. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1988.
WEEK 8: Brooklyn Personal
Experience Narratives: Workshop
READINGS:
Bauman, Richard. "Introduction." In Story, Performance, and
Event. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Hymes, Dell. "Ways of Speaking." In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Edited by Richard Bauman and Joel
Sherzer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Oring, Elliott. "Folklore Methodology and American Humor
Research." In Humor in America: Research Guide to Genres
and Topics. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1988.
______________"Documenting Folklore: The Annotation." In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989.
Schoemaker, George H. The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday
Life. Bloomington: Trickster Press, 1990, pages TBA.
ASSIGNMENT: Brooklyn Personal Experience Narrative. See
below for assignment description.
WEEK 9: Standup Brooklyn
READINGS:
Kaufman, Will. "Lenny Bruce: 'I'm not a comedian'." In The
Comedian as Confidence Man: Studies in Irony Fatigue.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Mintz, Lawrence. "Stand-Up Comedy as Social and Cultural
Mediation," In What's So Funny?: Humor in American
Culture. Edited by Nancy A. Walker. Wilmington,
DE: Scholarly
Resources, Inc., 1998.
Olson, Stephanie Koziski. "Standup Comedy." In Humor in
America: Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Edited by Lawrence E. Mintz.Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1988.
_________________________"The Standup Comedian as
Anthropologist: Intentional Culture Critic." In The Humor
Prism in 20th-Century America. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1997.
WEEK 10: Brooklyn Comics
READINGS: (Auto)biography on Brooklyn comic of choice.
ASSIGNMENT: Presentation. See
below for assignment description.
WEEK 11: Brooklyn on Stage I
ASSIGNMENT: Students are required to see the Off-Broadway
play: Bridge and Tunnel. See below for assignment
description.
READINGS:
Colon, Jesus. A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches. New York: International, 1882.
Hoch, Danny. "Some People." In Jails, Hospitals, and Hip
Hop & Some People. New York: Random
House Inc., 1998.
Simon, Neil. Brighton Beach Memoirs. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1984.
VIEW IN CLASS: Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn
and Other Identities. Written and
performed by Anna Devere Smith; Directed by George C. Wolfe,
1993.
WEEK 12: Brooklyn on Stage II
READINGS:
Brooklyn Historical Society. Neighborhood History Guide: Red Hook and Gowanus. Brooklyn, NY: The Brooklyn Historical Society,
2000.
Brown, Mari and Deanna Pucelli. There Goes the
Neighborhood. Unpublished script. Performed in several
venues in
Brooklyn, New York: 2004.
Kessner, Thomas. The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977, pages TBA.
Leed, Mark. Passport's Guide to Ethnic New York: A Complete Guide to the Many Faces and Cultures of New York. Chicago: NTC,
1991, pages TBA.
PERFORMANCE/LECTURE: Mari Brown and Deanna
Pucelli. Pucelli will perform the one-woman show, There Goes
the Neighborhood. Brown and Pucelli will talk about the
play and answer questions.
WEEK 13: Brooklyn on the Screen
ASSIGNMENTS: View two of the following by today:
* Several episodes of The Honeymooners
* Radio Days by Woody Allen (1987)
* Crooklyn by Spike Lee (1994)
* My Cousin Vinny by Jonathan Lynn (1992)
* Moonstruck by Norman Jewison, script by John Patrick
Shanley
READINGS:
Allen, Woody. "Radio Days." In Woody Allen on Woody
Allen: In Conversation with Stig Bjorkman. New York: Grove
Press, 1995.
Brooklyn Rediscovery. Brooklyn on
Film. Working
Paper No.1. New York: Brooklyn Educational & Cultural Alliance,
1979, pages TBA.
Fuchs, Cynthis. Spike Lee Interviews.
Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
hooks, bell. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the
Movies. New Jersey: Routledge, 1996, pages TBA.
McCrohan, Donna. The Honeymooner's Companion: The Kramdens
and the Nortons Revisted. New York: Workman, 1978.
Wernblad, Annette. Brooklyn Is Not Expanding: Woody
Allen's Comic Universe. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson
University
Press, 1992, pages TBA.
WEEK 14: Brooklyn on the Page
READING: Novel of choice that takes place in and/or is about
Brooklyn.
ASSIGNMENT: Presentation. See below for assignment description.
WEEK 15: Wrap Up and Final Presentations. Final paper due. See below for assignment descriptions.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Readings: Students are required to complete weekly reading assignments. Each week,
different students will be asked to frame
a particular reading for the class. Framing a discussion entails: Presenting a brief evaluation of the reading, preparing pertinent
questions, and distributing a
handout. Students
are required to frame a reading at least twice during the course.
2. Story Collection: In order to get a feel for the ethnographic, each student will collect (by taping) and transcribe a personal
experience narrative from an informant. Students will be provided with release forms. Due on Week 8. Three pages, maximum; typed,
double-spaced. Subject: Brooklyn. During class, we
will share our personal experience narratives and talk about how
Brooklyn and humor both are performed in the narratives.
3. Biographies: Each student will select a comic who originates from Brooklyn, read his or her (auto)biography, and present to the
class. Possible comics: Joey Adams, Woody Alan, Dave Barry,
William
Bendix (although not born in
Brooklyn, he "performed" it), Mel
Brooklyn and humor both are performed in the narratives.
3. Biographies: Each student will select a comic who originates from Brooklyn, read his or her (auto)biography, and present to the
class. Possible comics: Joey Adams, Woody Alan, Dave Barry,
William
Bendix (although not born in
Brooklyn, he "performed" it), Mel
Brooklyn and humor both are performed in the narratives.
3. Biographies: Each student will select a comic who originates from Brooklyn, read his or her (auto)biography, and present to the
class. Possible comics: Joey Adams, Woody Alan, Dave Barry,
William
Bendix (although not born in
Brooklyn, he "performed" it), Mel
Brooklyn and humor both are performed in the narratives.
3. Biographies: Each student will select a comic who originates from Brooklyn, read his or her (auto)biography, and present to the
class. Possible comics: Joey Adams, Woody Alan, Dave Barry,
William
Bendix (although not born in
Brooklyn, he "performed" it), Mel
Brooks, Eddie
Cantor, Kim Coles, Pat Cooper, Dom DeLuise, Phil Foster, Jack
Gilford, Jackie
Gleason,
Morty Gunty, Buddy Hackett, Edward Everett Horton, Danny
Kaye, Alan King, Anne Meara, Zero Mostel, S.J. Perelman, Rosie Perez,
Colin Quinn, Martha Raye,
the Ritz Brothers, Joan Rivers, Chris Rock (not born, but
bred), Jerry
Stiller, Barbra Streisand, Mae West, Henny Youngman.
Students
will talk about how their particular comic performs/performed
and/or represents/represented Brooklyn. Please bring a recording
or video
to class. Each student will have approximately 10 minutes to
present so choose supporting materials accordingly. Please include what you have learned from the class
readings thus far. Due on Week 10.
4. Performance: Students are required to see Sarah Jones's one-woman play, Bridge and Tunnel, by Week 11. A three-page review
and
analysis of the performance is due on that date. Include a
discussion of the play's and of the actor's use of humor. The Bleecker Street Theatre is located at 45 Bleecker
Street.
5. Films and TV: Students are required to see two of the films or television shows listed in Week 13 by that date.
6. Novel: Students are required to select one popular novel and do an old-fashioned "book report." Address the following
questions: Is the fact that the novel is set in Brooklyn, important to the plot, character developments, climax, etc. of the book? How
does the author deal with Brooklyn? Are there humor elements in the book? If so, how important is Brooklyn in the
development, formation, and/or performance of these elements? How does the reader come to understand Brooklyn through the book?
Possible novels:
Hamill, Pete, Jeffrey Neuman, and David Rosenthal, eds.
The Subway Series Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster,
2001.
Hamill, Pete. Drinking Life: A Memoir. New York: Little,
Brown & Company, 1995.
Letham, Jonathan. The Fortress of Solitude. New
York: Doubleday, 2003.
_______________ Motherless Brooklyn.
New York: Vintage, 2000.
Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. New York: The
Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996.
Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. New
York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Sohn, Amy. Run, Catch, Kiss. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1999.
Sorrentino, Gilbert. Little Casino. Minneapolis,
MN: Coffee House Press, 2002.
Wyatt, Andrea, and Alice Leccese Powers, eds. Brooklyn
Reader. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1995. Writers
include: Anatole Broyard, Cristina Garcia, Henry Miller, Betty
Smith, Derek Walcott,
Truman Capote, Spike
Lee, Isaac
Bashevis Singer,
William Styron,
Walt Whitman.
7. Final Presentation: Students select a Brooklyn topic. The topic can be about anything or anyone so long as it is
identified with Brooklyn and contains some elements of humor in its context or content. This assignment porvides student with the
opportunity to introduce topics, groups, events, etc. not
included or
under-represented in the syllabus. The lecture must include
visual
materials (slides,
videos, etc.). The final presentations will take place on the
last day of class. The format will follow a standard academic conference. I will assign moderators to different clusters of
topics.
8. Final paper: a 10-page paper about the topic presented in the conference. This should be a standard academic research paper.
GRADING
Weekly participation in seminar: 20%
Discussion framing: 10%
Story Collection: 10%
Biographies: 10%
Performance review and analysis: 10%
Book report: 10%
Final Presentation and paper: 30%