Product Description: In many ways, the history of domestic humor writing is also a history of domestic life in the twentieth century. For many years, domestic humor was written primarily by females; significant contributions from male writers began as times and family structures changed...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This engaging and accessible book examines the world of seven contemporary, popular American women writers and their individual use of wit as a subtle and effective strategy to engage, or "control", the reader. A chapter is devoted to each of the seven writers - Lisa Alther, Rita Mae Brown, Nora Ephron, Shirley Jackson, Alison Lurier, Grace Paley, and Anne Tyler - and discusses their writings and their use of wit in the context of their lives...read more

Product Description: First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: The twenty-one original essays in this volume explore the way women have used humor to break down cultural stereotypes between the genders. Examples from literature and the performing arts deal with humor and violence, humor and disability, humor and the supposition of women's shame, lesbian and ethnic humor and particularly women's responses to men's humor...read more

Women's Comic Visions celebrates the resurgence of interest and research on contemporary women comic writers and performers and on long-forgotten women humorists that has come about because of the feminist movement. A collection of noteworthy essays commissioned especially for this volume, the book focuses on the American experience and American women theorists on humor, literary creators of humor, and performers. There is an interdisciplinary perspective to the book, with scholars of literature, psychology, history, and American studies analyzing America's attitudes and values regarding women and humor. Included are examples of long-lost women writers and cartoonists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as contemporary performers such as Moms Mabley, Lucille Ball, Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lily Tomlin. Attention is given to the similarities and differences between black and white women comic practitioners. Finally, the question of a woman's culture with a separate style, perspective, and content regarding humor is addressed, giving rise to comparisons and contrasts between women's and men's humor. Women's Comic Visions brings together the practical, the abstract, the applied, and the theoretical. The book dispels the conventional wisdom that women, having no sense of humor could neither produce comic material nor laugh at appropriate times.