Kathleen Rowe Karlyn and feminist genres of laughter

摘要

Several years ago, Victoria Sturtevant and I began to plan an anthology of essays that would encompass the history of U.S. women comedians from the silent screen through cable television. Thinking about these outrageous bawds and wits, as well as the uncontrollable laughter they continue to incite, we kept coming back to a point made by Kathleen Rowe in her groundbreaking 1995 book The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter . The power of funny women, says Rowe, is crystalized in the specific threat of “the female mouth and its dangerous emanations—laughter and speech” (43).