Comedy Studies

Comedy and Racial (In)Justice

Comedy, race, and justice have a long and complicated relationship. In some contexts, comedy has been employed to challenge racial stereotypes, critique structures of power and knowledge, and amplify marginalized voices. It has functioned as a tool for survival, resistance and community cohesion, embodying truth-telling, ethical critique and resilience in the face of colonisation and racial oppression. Comedy can be understood as a disruptive form of political affect capable of mobilizing communities, highlighting injustices, and creating new cross-racial solidarities premised on hope and shared laughter. 

Yet, comedy has also been used to perpetrate racial harm, shore up white supremacist attitudes, and facilitate racial exclusion. As populist and white nationalist leaders, far-right provocateurs, and some comedians seek to weaponize humor as a tool for spreading division and derision, and for mainstreaming far-right and white supremacist ideologies, there has never been a more important time to think collectively and critically on these issues.

Therefore, these dualities, between oppression and liberation, exclusion and community, make the relationship between comedy and racial (in)justice a compelling subject for academic and creative inquiry more generally, and within the field of comedy studies specifically.

While humor studies has, to date, predominantly drawn upon and centered European liberal humanist philosophies and approaches that privilege and universalize a white, male, and able-bodied perspective and worldview, we also seek to highlight Indigenous epistemologies and storytelling traditions that can provide unique decolonial frameworks for better understanding the role of humour in relation to racial (in)justice. By centering these perspectives, we also aim to move humour studies beyond Eurocentric liberal humanist approaches and acknowledge the global diversity of humor practices. 

Context: In early 2025, two international conferences, Mixed Bill’s Comedy and Racial Justice conference (Manchester, UK) and The Critical Humor Studies Association’s inaugural conference (Pomona, CA, USA), took place within the span of a month and showcased some of the latest and most cutting-edge research being produced by critical humor scholars from around the world. Following the success of these conferences, organizers and participants from these two events sought to collaborate and develop one or more special issues on the theme of ‘Comedy and Racial (In)Justice.’ We aim to highlight the wide range of studies, theoretical perspectives, geographical contexts and subject positions in the special issue(s) that we witnessed at these and other events.  

Details: The special issue(s) will center the theoretical interventions offered by critical race humor studies and decolonial approaches to humor studies, while acknowledging the disparate global contexts in which both comedy and racialization operate. We are inviting submissions for articles that speak to any of the following areas:

• The role of humor in critical race pedagogy.
• Therapeutic understandings of humor as a mode of epistemic reparation and healing.
• The use of comedy as a form of liberation from the entrapment of racializing representation.
• How the rise of populism, and its complex relationship with cancel culture and free speech debates in the defence of white supremacy, plays out in comedy. 
• Analysis of the neoliberal conditions of contemporary comedy production both on screen and on stage in relation to racialization.
• Humor, racial inequality, and social (in)justice.
• Dehumanizing humor and violence.
• The politics of racial humor in a global context.
• The politics of race and racist ridicule.
• How comedy studies can be decolonised/ de-westernised.
• Humor, identity, and power. 
• First Nations and indigenous humour as a tool for cultural survival and resistance.
• Therapeutic and communal dimensions of Indigenous humour in addressing trauma and systemic racism, comparable to practices among First Nations, indigenous and diaspora communities.

The special issue(s) will speak to global trends and concerns whilst remaining alert to different local contexts