Whiteface: Improv Comedy and Anti-blackness (American Frictions, 5)

This study originates in the observation that improv comedy or improvised theater has such a vast majority of white people practicing it, while other improvisational or comedic art forms (jazz, freestyle rap, stand up) are historically grounded in and marked as Black cultural production. What it is about improv that makes it such a white space? Can an absence be an object of study? If so, what is there to study? Where should one look? American Frictions presents cutting-edge research in the field of American cultural studies.The series explores manifold complexities and frictions in the Americas, building on existing scholarship and propelling it in new directions. It challenges nation-based approaches by offering perspectives that are polyvocal, including interdisciplinary and transnational viewpoints from North America, the Caribbean, and Europe.Volumes in the series - peer reviewed monographs and collections - delve into literature, culture, theory, and the arts, situating them in historical contexts of global networks and migrations. They contribute to epistemologies of difference, diversity, and inequality, including gender, queer, decolonial, indigenous, and critical race studies