Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change, a collection of essays edited by Matthew R. Meier and Casey R. Schmitt, offers a wide-reaching range of case studies of stand-up comedy and sociopolitical engagement. They note that “scholars of rhetoric persist in their efforts to characterize the process by and which social change occurs and the rhetorical forms and strategies that encourage such change,” so the collection aims to enter “that conversation by addressing stand-up comedy as a unique rhetorical form in terms of its unique ability to facilitate social change” (xxii). To these ends, the collection draws together an impressive range of scholars, critical approaches, and primary materials that yields an undoubtedly useful anthology for rhetoric and humor scholars.
Meier and Schmitt organize the essays according to four categories: “Stand-up and Identity,” “Stand-up, Race, and Culture,” “Stand-up and Politics,” and “Standing Up, Breaking Rules.”...
