MA Research Paper

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Sociology

Supervisor

Dr. Anton Allahar

Delay of Publication

1

Abstract

The current study aims to compare how South Asian comedians Russell Peters and Hasan Minhaj use racial and ethnic humor to articulate their understandings of Brownness, a tenuous space of both privilege and persecution in North America. Racial and ethnic humor inhabit a contentious continuum that includes exclusionary racist humor, which naturalizes and reiterates racial ideologies, and emancipatory racial humor that exposes and resists dominant power structures. I employ a thematic content analysis of the stand-up comedy shows Comedy Now!(2004) and Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (2017) to argue that the social construction of Brownness in the material of South Asian comedians shapes its propensity for social order and social change. In conclusion, I consider the ideological implications of racial and ethnic humor on the social perceptions of marginalized groups and in public discourses on race and racism.

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