Standing Up Speaking Out

<p>In recent decades some of the most celebrated and culturally influential American oratorical performances have come not from political leaders or religious visionaries but from stand-up comics. Even though comedy and satire have been addressed by rhetorical scholarship in recent decades little attention has been paid to stand-up. This collection is an attempt to further cultivate the growing conversation about stand-up comedy from the perspective of the rhetorical tradition. It brings together literatures from rhetorical cultural and humor studies to provide a unique exploration of stand-up comedy that both argues on behalf of the form’s capacity for social change and attempts to draw attention to a series of otherwise unrecognized rhetors who have made significant contributions to public culture through comedy.</p>