In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, -charged humor, - and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs--they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique.

Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up...