Seriously
funny: Tough topics yield to a little humor
BY KATHRYN GALLIEN I
f you were a standup comic with a newly minted PhD and with a scholarly interest in humor, wouldn’t you try to land a job at Skidmore, the founding host of the
acclaimed National College Comedy Festival? That’s what Beck Krefting did—and suceeded, joining the American studies faculty in 2010.
Sure enough, Skidmore turned out to be a place where people appreciate a good laugh and her good scholarship. She discovered a level of student per- formance in ComFest that’s “far be- yond what I anticipated, and by and large the comedy is thoughtful and respectful.” Skidomedy trouper Peter Johnston ’14 reports, “She comes to
WHEN IT WORKS— WHEN LAUGHTER SIGNALS A SUCCESSFUL TRANSACTION —IT’S LIBERATING.
all our shows, and it feels incredible when you can hear her cackle from the back of the auditorium.” The rest of the year, she adds, “students in class make me laugh all the time.” And vice versa. Rebecca Baruc ’15 says, “Beck imbues the
classroom discussion with her sense of humor—which is never at the expense of anyone else’s sense of comfort.” Julia Mandel-Folly ’14, who has taken courses such as “Di- versity in the United States” and “Disorderly Women” with Krefting, says she “has an endlessly impressive way of bal- ancing heavy topics with humor, using jokes to help make
18 SCOPE SPRING 2014
the class open to discussing larger issues and keeping the classroom a safe space where anyone can participate.” That’s just what Krefting is going for. “I think humor can play an important role in learning, helping to introduce a sensitive topic in courses where ethnicity, ability, class, and gender are discussed.” Nothing like a few laughs to ease ten- sion and foster conversation. In her standup routines, Krefting offers a mix of personal anecdotes and pointed feminist materi- al; it’s what she calls “charged humor” —comedy as social commentary seek- ing to advance social justice. There is a strong tradition of such humor in Ameri ca, dating from the explosion of
comedy both in clubs and on TV during the 1950s. That’s when, she points out, Dick Gregory undergirded his come- dy with the central tenet that “no one is free as long as any- one is oppressed, so it’s the work we have to do to lift every- one up.” As a serious scholar of the funny, Krefting says, “No, re-
search does not take all the fun out of it,” though she ad- mits that transcribing jokes verbatim sure can. Her work on charged humor—the varying degrees to which comics in- corporate it into their material, the evolution of its role in
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