CAT 124/125 DIVINE COMEDY-ALITY-NESS A Practicum, Writing Workshop & Critical Analysis in Modern American Stand-up Comedy

Also known as: Dirty Words, Pig Newtons & More Monkeys For Me SPRING QUARTER 2014 Professor K. Wayne Yang, Ethnic Studies kwayne@ucsd.edu Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, MFA in Writing harakika@ucsd.edu This will not be a course on how to be funny. It will also not be a fanboy class on Louis CK and Dave Chappelle. This will also not be a course on the work of Medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri. I just needed to borrow and profane the name of his epic poem “The Divine Comedy” for the selfish reason of creating a catchy course title. I just want to be upfront about this now so none of you get mean or grumpy halfway through the quarter. That being said, I expect we will all do a lot of laughing. One of my last evaluations said, “If nothing else, we really laughed at him a lot. Especially his haircut.” We will definitely watch or listen to work by Margaret Cho, Patrice O’Neal, Roseanne Barr, George Carlin, Aziz Ansari, Chelsea Peretti, Sarah Silverman, Louis CK, and Dave Chappelle (with a critical lens). And Dante Alighieri will still have nothing to do with this class. He’s dead. Still here? Ok, cool . . . This course will combine the concerns of the 124 Practicum (experiential and community-based learning) with the concerns of a CAT 125 course (public rhetoric, practical communication/writing, professional development, social media). You will write, research for, analyze, workshop and perform stand-up comedy material. Let me repeat that last part. You will perform stand-up comedy material weekly. You do not have to be able to get laughs or be comfortable on stage in order to get an A. You do have to be brave, respectful and a hard worker. You will not only be asked to critique our class texts, but also conceive and develop your stand-up material AS A FORM OF social/cultural/media critique. I should elaborate on this point. When I said earlier this class is not all about becoming funny, I wasn’t joking. If all you care about is getting big-belly laughs and don’t mind

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doing it at the expense of another person’s race, gender, sexuality, etc. – then you shouldn’t take this class. This course will be much more interested in forging a productive dialogue between the speaker and the issues of race, gender and sexuality. Your writing and performance will be subject to a variety of constraints (for ex. No derogatory slurs that demean another person based on their color, nation, culture etc.) We’re not asking you to hold all your punches. We are going to ask you to take a lot of risks. We are going to discuss these risks. And we want to defend your right to take them. At the same time we should always be considering this problem, this contradiction of comedy. The comedy we’re going to be confronting (and producing) hinges on a contradiction between the offensive and the critical. The central contradiction of standup comedy – of anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-colonial comedy – is that racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia are ugly phenomena and pressing concerns. At the same time, there is an internal ridiculousness of these phenomena that make us laugh. The confrontation of tragedy can provoke laughter. So can the demystification of incredibly dark desires. You are going to continually ask yourself questions like these: How can you be funny and critical about racism without advertising racism? How can you be funny about violence without undermining the consequence of violence? The concerns of the best stand-up comedians will also be our concerns – racism, sexism, violence, colonialism, homophobia, class disparity, disability, and more. We will also be concerned with the ethics of contemporary stand-up comedy (for ex. gender inequality for professional comedians). This is something of a class creating comedy that is taking comedy as its subject. You will also develop written analyses that chart your thinking/progress and place your projects within a critical framework. You will participate in studio critiques, lab/workshop hours, engage with films, texts and critical theory. In general you will perform weekly at a “comedy in progress” night at Porter’s Pub and engage with the on-campus UCSD undergraduate and graduate student communities. On the occasions you don’t perform at Porter’s, you will instead publicize for and perform at other public events. For example you will have a midterm performance at an open-mic night that you will research and visit within your “comedy families.” On at least one occasion you will be paired with members of another CAT Practicum, “Comicraft,” a course that workshops and investigates comic books, in order to produce/present a collaborative, interdisciplinary project. The final comedy showcase will take place at a UCSD venue other than Porter’s (likely the Cross Cultural Center). For your FINAL performance, you will draw upon your previous projects, and select your strongest 5-7 minutes of work to perform. You will also design a calling card schwag

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ornament to give out at the festival that will advertise/brand your creative work/vision. This performance will take place at a public, on-campus location. At some point in the quarter, your “comedy family” is required to make a visit to a comedy club and write a collective reflection/critique of the performance. You don’t need to break the bank on this. I suggest you all put yourselves on the email list at The Madhouse Comedy Club. Madhouse frequently offers free tickets for their shows and features a fairly eclectic group of performers. You can also visit the “18 Mighty Mountain Warriors” show (April 18-20) presented by Pacific Arts Movement to satisfy this requirement. Every student will develop an online portfolio throughout the quarter. As a finishing touch you will re-purpose your artist memos (another name for these might be process statements) into an “About” section on your website that will discuss your body of work from a curatorial point-of-view. You will do this with attention to the research, texts, discussions, critical practices and cultural references that influenced you throughout the quarter. MEETING TIMES: All meeting times take place on . . . SECTIONS ...................................................................MW 1-2pm OR 2-3pm LECTURE .....................................................................MW 4-6pm SEMINAR ....................................................................MW 6-8PM OFFICE HOURS ………………………………………………………..TUES 1230-230pm AND BY APPT

COURSE TEXTS You are not required to BUY any texts for this course. We are trying to keep things as cheap as possible. Your readings will be available online, on TED or as handouts. BUT – You are required to print out reading materials when they are scanned/uploaded to TED and you are required to have these materials on hand during class. When families are being workshopped, you are required to print out their work (usually joke scripts), make marginalia, and come prepared to talk about their pieces. You are required to print out the 2 critiques you write up for Monday afternoons. Buy your own stapler. Be prepared to spend about $5 on a stapler and $25 on copies this quarter. AND – You are required to have access to a Netflix account for the quarter. This is because several of your required texts are standup comedy specials and will be available streaming through this service. This may cost you somewhere between $16-$24

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SOCIAL MEDIA You are required to maintain your presence on TED this quarter through blogs/discussion boards. A lot of communication (updates, clarifications, changes to syllabus) will take place at the beginnings of discussion and in email form. So make sure to be at discussion sections on time, and make sure to check your email regularly. You are also required to create and maintain the following forms of social media for this course: Twitter Your Twitter will fill at least two roles during the quarter. First it will be an archive of the quotes, passing ideas, confrontations, dialogues, etc. that will document your critical thinking and process during the quarter. It will also help publicize and document your performances and the performances of your comedy family members. I have built my own Twitter to document this class along the way - https://twitter.com/DBCShiaLabeouf (https://twitter.com/signup) WordPress Your WordPress will help represent you as an artist, performer, writer, etc. Take a look at this page for ideas - http://www.miciamosely.com/comedy/ I have also built my own WordPress to illustrate some of the concepts we’ll be discussing AND to document this class along the way - http://divinecomedyalityness.wordpress.com/ (http://wordpress.com/website/?source=google&campaign=hsb&utm_content=DisURLWebsite&utm_campaign=ExactWordPress&gclid=CKuppvGZsr0CFVKIfgodWJoAVA) Vimeo OR YouTube You will have to post video of your performances on your WordPress site and may need a YouTube or Vimeo account to handle easy uploads. You may have to create a YouTube account in order to view some of the materials we want to discuss this quarter. (https://vimeo.com/join?gclid=CPWDz8qdsr0CFY6RfgodTEAAZg&dclid=CO_agcydsr0CFQuhhQodg3AAvw

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COMIC FAMILY At the beginning of the quarter, you will all take part in choosing your “comic family.” Your comic family are the people who support you while working on new material. They will help document your work while you are on stage. You will collaborate with them, workshop with them, meet with them outside of class to view/listen to comedy specials, etc. In class we will frequently break into “families” in order to pitch/perform/critique/develop our class projects. You have an obligation to be honest and supportive to the members of your family. You shouldn’t let them perform material you think is mediocre or problematic. You are expected to give them productive feedback in the form of written notes, class discussions and platonic coffee dates. To open up discussions, I may call on you to introduce the work of someone in your family. For your MIDTERM assignment, you and your comic family will schedule/coordinate an evening to visit a local open mic event together, perform, and help document (video) each others’ performances. You should give the members of your family props for being on stage. You should defend them from hecklers. When you settle on a time/place you should let our entire class know – as some of us might want to come out to support your family as well. Write down the names of the different comic families below. Family 1: Family 2: Family 3: Family 4: Family 5

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GRADING 124 Evaluation: Remix Comic Routine Script & Analysis ...........................................................................5% Write Out Loud/Themed Routine Script & Submission to “So Say We All” ………..………10% IGNITE Script and performance(“Comedic How-To”) ………..………………………………………10% Weekly live performance hours (Porter’s Pub) ……………………………………………........…….15% Workshop ......................................................................................................................30% Workshop grade includes: workshop attendance and participation, critiques, family harmony (you will assess this and I will assign part of it) Open-Mic Midterm........................................................................................................15% Standup Comedy Festival Performance & Schwag .......................................................15% 125 Evaluation: Attendance in sections ..................................................................................................25% “Dear Elvis” Letters (Artist Memos) ..............................................................................30% Live Comedy Visit & Critique .........................................................................................15% Online Portfolio…………………………………………………………………………………………….……..……30% BREAKDOWN of Online Portfolio: Curated links, Link to Twitter, Contact, Additional page of your choosing ………….……..10% Standup Video Clip Curation & Introduction .................................................................10% “About” Section of Online Portfolio...............................................................................10% Curated links should demonstrate expertise and be a draw for people to access your page. Additional page might be something like: Funny stories Joke of the day/knock knock jokes Something totally random for comedic effect – for ex. a page on desert plants and birds or another idiosyncratic interest ALSO INCLUDED in Online Portfolio: Sample jokes (scripts) Performances (YouTube or Vimeo) Blog/reflections (usually this is the “Home” page) Tools for comedians/joke utility belt Slam a heckler

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Attendance and Participation Please plan to be on time and engaged in section/workshop/lecture. You will be allowed two absences before your grade drops dramatically. Dramatically. Yes, I am writing that word twice to scare you. Excessive absences and tardiness will be grounds for failure in the course. Continuous use of electronic devices not connected to the class will significantly affect your participation grade. Attendance/participation is more than being in the chair physically. Being in the chair physically is of course an essential part of it. But I also want you to be generous with your peers. I want you to help each other learn. That generosity is coming to class ready to engage with the material and your classmates’ ideas about the material. One informal rule I have is that I want everyone to try and talk at least once during our discussions. It’s not about making you feel nervous or uncomfortable – it’s about you having a perspective and knowledge that is valuable – so share/collaborate with us.

Course Website Important information for the class can be found on the course website at http://ted.ucsd.edu. Your user name and password is the same used to login to Tritonlink. Make sure that you can login to the system by the first day of class. A copy of this syllabus, assignment details and important reminders will be posted to the site. We may alter the syllabus during the course of the quarter. Any changes made will be posted to the TED website.

Course Readings Almost all course readings and materials will be posted on our class web site (http://ted.ucsd.edu), as indicated in the schedule of readings. Complete readings by the beginning of the class for which they are assigned.

Proxy server Please note: Access to the TED and reserves websites may be restricted to UCSD IP addresses. To access the reserves materials off campus you must use UCSD’s “proxy server.” http://www-no.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/ for more info. Alternatively, you may login from off-campus using the Virtual Private Network. Details to configure VPN found here: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/services/computing/remote-access/vpn-virtual-private-network.html

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UCSD Principles of Community The CAT program fully supports the UCSD Principles of Community. Please take a moment to review them as part of our code of conduct for the class. http://www.ucsd.edu/explore/about/principles.html http://www.ucsd.edu/_files/POC_Spanish.pdf

Academic Integrity You are expected to uphold the standards of academic integrity in all your work. UCSD has a university-wide Policy on Integrity of Scholarship, which can be found online at http://www-senate.ucsd.edu/manual/appendices/app2.htm. All students must read and be familiar with this Policy. All suspected violations of academic integrity will be reported to UCSD’s Academic Integrity Coordinator. Students found to have violated UCSD’s standards for academic integrity may receive both administrative and academic sanctions. Administrative sanctions may extend up to and include suspension or dismissal, and academic sanctions may include failure of the assignment or failure of the course. Specific examples of prohibited violations of academic integrity include the following: (although this should in no way be considered an exhaustive list of examples): Academic stealing refers to the theft of exams or exam answers, of papers or take-home exams composed by others, and of research notes, computer files, or data collected by others. Academic cheating, collusion, and fraud refer to having others do your schoolwork or helping or allowing them to present your work as their own; using unauthorized materials during exams; inventing data or bibliography to support a paper, project, or exam; purchasing tests, answers, or papers from any source whatsoever; submitting (nearly) identical papers to two classes. Helping other students to cheat or steal is also cheating. Misrepresenting personal or family emergencies or health problems in order to extend deadlines and alter due dates or requirements is another form of academic fraud. Claiming you have been ill when you were not, claiming that a family member has been ill or has died when that is untrue are some examples of unacceptable ways of trying to gain more time than your fellow students have been allowed in which to complete assigned work. Plagiarism refers to the use of another’s work without full acknowledgment, whether by suppressing the reference, neglecting to identify direct quotations, paraphrasing closely or at length without citing sources, spuriously identifying quotations or data, or cutting and pasting the work of several (usually unidentified) authors into a single undifferentiated whole.

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WEEK ONE MONDAY 3/31

Sections: Learning each others’ names Chris Bliss TED Talks Accessing materials on TED Ian Bogost “The Cocktail Party Test” In class: Write draft of your artist bios and bring this to lecture Lecture: Tracing your comedic lineage Syllabus Scripting a joke Begin THE GRID of types of jokes CREATE: Twitter and WordPress In class: write down 3 hypothetical heckles and 3 responses Introduce Remix Comedy prompt

Watch: Netflix: Aziz Ansari “Dangerously Delicious” Write and practice: Remix Comedy performance script

WEDNESDAY 4/2

Sections: Creating the vocabulary of this project And: How do we want to workshop/critique? 4-6pm: Remix Comedy Performances Write your “Dear Elvis” artist memo and post it to your TED blog Get in pairs of 2s and 3s Discuss what your goals for this course are and if they’ve changed after performing Create comedy families and sign up for workshop time Presentation on some of the joke species

Read: The Comedy Bible, “Joke structure” pgs. 69-100 Watch: Netflix: Mike Birbiglia “What I Should Have Said Was Nothing” Tig Notaro “This American Life – Taylor Dayne Story” Post by Sunday, 4/6, 5pm: 750-Word Draft of script for “So Say We All” Prompt

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WEEK TWO MONDAY 4/7

Sections: Your story, your expertise, cocktail party introduction Lecture: Comedy as rhetoric: identifying audience and purpose How not to advertise stereotypes Workshop Families “So Say We All” Draft

Read: Richard Delgado: “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative” Chinua Achebe “Foreward” Watch: YouTube: Dave Chappelle “Killin’ Them Softly”

WEDNESDAY 4/9

Sections: Discussion of Delgado and Achebe Lecture: Professor Wayne Yang will give his lecture on master v. counter-narrative: How not to be ventriloquized through like a dummy “So Say We All” Performances

Read: We Want To #CancelColbert Christopher Mah “I don’t see race” Watch: Feminist Frequency “Ironic Advertising” and “The Straw Feminist” and “Women in Refrigerators” Lisa Lampanelli “Improv” Louis CK “Chewed Up” Post by Sunday, 4/13, 5pm: Draft of Porters 1 set using 3-4 joke species of your choosing

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WEEK THREE MONDAY 4/14

Sections: Discussion of Feminist Frequency, and We Want To #CancelColbert Workshop Families for Porter’s Performances

Read: Judy Carter “Comedy . . . Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid” Lindy West “An Open Letter to White Male Comedians” & “How (not) to Make a Rape Joke” articles, video and comments Watch: Daniel Tosh Wanda Sykes “Imma Be Me”

WEDNESDAY 4/16

Sections: Discuss Lindy West Residency Performance 1 at Porter’s Pub

Crunk Feminist Collective, “De-Tangling Racism: On White Women and Black Hair” Sarah Silverman “Jesus Is Magic” Paul Ogata

WEEK TEN: FINAL PERFORMANCES MONDAY 6/2

Sections: Work on your schwag Final Workshops

WEDNESDAY 6/4

TBA

THURSDAY 6/5

FINAL COMEDY SHOWCASE Bring your Schwag ornament calling card

FINALS WEEK Online Portfolio Due

We are saying thank you and waving / dark though it is

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Note: Performer, Comedian and Emcee Micia Mosely will visit the class at some point during the quarter. When that date becomes concrete, readings and assignments for that date on the syllabus may shift. Be prepared. And check TED and your email for updates. Repeat: We may alter the syllabus during the course of the quarter. Readings, recordings, films etc. may shift in order to meet the interests/demands of the class and community involved. Any changes made will be announced in class and reiterated via email. WEEKLY ARTIST MEMOS (PROCESS STATEMENTS) Following the public performance, you will also write a 350 word “Dear Elvis, artist memo diary” or “process statement” citing and discussing the various readings and performers you borrowed from and informed your performance, what themes you discovered you were attracted to, why the jokes progressed in the order they did, and what alterations to the material were made. You are writing to a pretend “witness” for your work, attempting to account for the goals and motivations of your work. You do not have to write to “Elvis.” You can write to “Christina” or “Janet” or whomever you like. You may find that your witness will keep you accountable for the political aims of your work. What constitutes a critique/artist memo/process statement might change depending on the assignment. And they might also change based on our discussions and what you feel is useful to document and problematize. So be vocal.

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My signature here confirms that I have read the syllabus for “Divine Comedy-ality-ness” and understand the assignments, grading breakdown, and work demands of this course. It also confirms that I will engage with this course and my classmates with respect and generosity as required by the code and conduct designated by Sixth College and UCSD. Print name/SID ___________________________________________ Sign ____________________________________________________ Date ___________________________________________________