Dirty Jews: Gender and Vulgarity in Jewish Comedy

REGISTRATION CLOSED, WALK UPS WELCOME- ABOUT THIS LECTURE: In the past two decades, American comedy has been animated by a cohort of raunchy “sex comics” like Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Rachel Bloom, Lena Dunham, Ilana Glazer, and Abbi Jacobson, and others. This lecture ties together the bawdy content of these comedians’ acts with their shared identities as women and Jews. How does their work connect to the comedy of earlier generations of so-called “unkosher comediennes” like Sophie Tucker and Totie Fields? How does their work connect to the longstanding tradition of Jewish men’s comedy? It turns out that what we understand as “funny” and what we understand as “Jewish” depend entirely on the gender of the comedian.

ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Shaina Hammerman is author of the book Silver Screen, Hasidic Jews: The Story of an Image, examining the effects of the portrayal of Hassidic Jews in the media. In addition to teaching Jewish cultural studies for the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, Shaina teaches humanities courses to college students at San Quentin State Prison as part of the Prison University Project. She holds a PhD in Jewish History and Culture from the Graduate Theological Union where she also received an MA in Jewish Studies.