Onwards comrades

Comedy research, MixedBill, Reflecting, Symposium, Teaching

L-R: Me, Hazel O’Keefe, Caz Moran, Ava Vidal, Rebecca Papworth, Jackie Hagan, Sameena Zehra, Kate Fox

I have been super quiet but progress is being made….

1. I have now written over half of my thesis – so I’m in the last year(ish) of write up. Shout out to all the other part-time students who had to deal with all the ‘so when will you actually be finished?’ questions over the Christmas break.

2. The Mixed Bill symposium went really well (image from the industry panel at the end of the day above). We even got a review (written by our keynote speaker) in the Journal of Comedy Studies – here! Kate, Lisa and I are now in the process of trying to pull together 2018’s event. More information, dates and the call for papers coming soon to all angry feminists/comedy scholars/ awesome humans.

3. I’m in the final stages of getting my second article published. Positives and negatives: Reclaiming the female body and self-deprecation in stand-up comedy. Soon it will exist (probably end of Feb 2018)! And when it does it will exist here (forever apparently).

4. I decided at the start of this year I would also set sail on the journey of the PGCLTHE (the PGCE specifically for learning and teaching in higher education – natch). I love teaching and have done it for a long time now in various guises – children, adults, teacher training and most recently HE students – so it felt like a good time. I managed to get some of my existing experience validated too (the Recognition of Prior Learning route- whoop) so I have started mid-way through. The sessions have been really useful and it has been great to meet and talk with some of my colleagues – life as an Associate Lecturer often involves sprinting past people in corridors and 5min chats at a photocopier (it also involves being mistaken for an undergraduate student on a fairly regular basis too – most recently in a public setting by someone who actually interviewed me for one of my jobs, which I have now had for 3 years – much to the amusement of my students who were present).

5. Oh and we got CATS!! In August my team adopted Frida and Valerie (after Kahlo and Solanas respectively, obvs). They are the best.

Frida

Valerie

Kid most likely

Comedians, Comedy research, feminisms, Gender, Reflecting, self-deprecation

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February 2017 was notable – I was published for the first time…. and no I will not stop banging on about it. I can (nay will) be referenced!

Tomsett, E. (2017) ‘Twenty-first century fumerist: Bridget Christie and the backlash against feminist humour’. Comedy Studies. 8:1. Taylor and Francis.

I get to use the best of all phrases in my PhD thesis now… the textbook ‘as I have argued elsewhere’. Exciting times.

The article evolved from a conference presentation I gave way back in 2014 at the University of Hull and centres around the argument that 2013, although notable for its many high profile successes for female comics, was not the ‘FINALLY THE WOMEN HAVE ARRIVED’ all-out party the media seemed to think it was. In terms of the party metaphor, it wasn’t really even time to open the buffet. In fact just as with every advancement for women into areas of labour outside the home, there was a swift inverse reaction, this time played out through reactionary and sexist humour.

I’m in the process of finishing the draft of my follow up article which will explore uses of self-deprecation in stand-up comedy. I was in total lock down over the Xmas period finishing the thesis chapter upon which this article will be based and am now counting the seconds until the end of term so I can get a day off.

Oh yeah and I have also recently co-founded a research network (Mixed Bill) – more on that here.

In other news…..

A random recent moment was the sudden posting of this image to social media by a fellow student of my high school (a school that has subsequently had both a name change and a complete facelift… as if in a kind of witness protection programme for buildings). The classic Sixth Form leaving book activity of ‘Person most likely’ – decorated with some pretty flipping snazzy clip art.

I had a vague memory of this… but there it was again in black and white. Five words that drive at the very heart of everything that, as an adult, regularly and completely does my head in.

FEMALE. VERSION. OF. PAUL. MERTON

This was the early 2000s (equality was achieved by then right, guys – *eye roll*) and 18 year old me didn’t really think twice about this – fast forward 3 years and this would have not stood for a second. At university I learnt that I’m not the female version of anything, thanks very much. I’m not some kind of rubbish tribute act to a guy who’s funny on TV.

I’ll be tackling this kind of subtle reinforcing of gendered expectation in the introduction to my research – as this really gets to the crux of why I am interested my area. The enduring need for society to define people in binary and to give women power or station only in its relation to their male counterparts. This renegotiation of gendered expectations constantly plays out through humour… another thing for the introduction to the thesis then.

Oh and my bestie Amy is kick-ass CBT therapist, not an interior designer – so take that The Man!

2016 in review and resolutions

Comedy research, Reflecting, Teaching

2016 upon reflection…

Jan : Planned and wrote all the lectures and session plans (from scratch) for my TV Comedy and Drama module at SHU.

Feb/ Mar/ Apr: A blur of endless teaching and commuting to and from Sheffield. 2 sets of board pens ruined. It was cold and rainy. That’s all I have in terms of memories of this period.

May: The markathon. Also briefly left the house to see Penny Arcade’s Loving Lasts Longer at Contact Theatre.

June: Having completed marking I headed off to Barcelona for the Primavera So und Music Festival (my 3rd visit). Greatly enjoyed the line-up which included LCD Soundsystem (who were off the chart amazing – I never thought I’d have the chance to see them live) Tame Impala, Wild Nothing, Suede, AR Kane, Daughter, Air, Savages, Radiohead, Beirut, Brian Wilson doing Pet Sounds, Orchestra Baobab, Bradford Cox… and so on….. Plus there was a really cool punk exhibition in the Modern Art museum in Barcelona too (which is where I took the photo of the smashed up room above).

July: Wrote my paper (Positives and Negatives: Reclaiming the Female Body and Self-Deprecation in Stand-up Comedy) for the Mock the Weak conference.

Aug: Headed up to the Edinburgh Festival – saw the following Daniel Kitson, Bridget Christie, Lolly Adefope, Tez Ilyas, Alison Spittle, David O’Doherty, Tessa Waters, Grainne Maguire, Ellie Taylor, Elf Lyons.……Oh and I completed designing the programme for the Women in Comedy Festival.

Sept: Presented my paper at Mock The Week Conference at University of Teesside and subsequently had the abstract of my paper accepted as part of a special issue of Comedy Studies Journal in 2018. Saw Amy Schumer perform live at the Manchester Apollo. Commenced mentoring my Arts Emergency student.

Oct: Moved house – will never be moving again. Watched a huge amount of comic talent as part of Women in Comedy Festival 2016! Started back at MMU working with the first year filmmakers on Contextualising Practice.

Nov: Tried to get our house into a house shape plus teaching, writing, writing, writing.

Dec: Xmased. Bunkered down for a few weeks to get a chapter of my thesis drafted.

2017 looking ahead…..

Resolutions:

1: Read more fiction by female writers – I read a huge amount of non-fiction by female academics and theorists but as an avid reader and stories I need to up my game. I have just finished Chris Kraus’ epistolary novel I Love Dick and stacked up on the bookshelf ready for deployment are a variety of novels to enjoy – including titles by Zadie Smith, Maggie Nelson, Harper Lee, Sarah Waters and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who was responsible for one of the most admirable television moments of 2016 when she reminded the terrifyingly short-sighted, Trump supporting editor of the U.S Spectator that as a white man he doesn’t get to decide who can feel discriminated against by racism (See here). How she remained composed when faced with such unbelievable ignorance was frankly astounding.

2: Accept that I can’t do everything – 2016 was a tough cookie and probably the limit for me in terms of commitments I can undertake whilst studying and trying to remain a functioning human being. There was a lot of turning down social engagements/ invites and then feeling guilty about having to do so. Moving house was also an exhausting and time-consuming activity and so 2017 will be about refocusing on what matters and accepting that I can’t be all things to all people. Get the research written, write the journal articles that have been accepted, teach to the best of my ability and be nicer to myself.

3: Try and do practical things that impact positively on others. Last year was basically a series of mornings that I woke up and cried about the direction humanity is heading in. I reject the inward looking rhetoric of placing certain nationalities/ classes/ economic groups/ ethnicities/ religions above others (anything that ends with the term ‘first’ needs to seriously consider the message it is sending). I will not let this stop me being positive but nor will I shut up and let thing just happen unchallenged either. The resources I have are small (and in many cases irrelevant – I research comedy) and I might not be able to do everything (see above) but I am hoping to find ways to make practical contributions myself and to facilitate others in making small contributions of time and skills to small organisations/ charities that need help too (by revolutionising the way one of the organisations I work for makes use of its volunteering policy).

4: March – www.womensmarchlondon.com Today there is an image in the press of two rich white men giving everyone the thumbs up having successfully stirred up hatred and division. In the background of this photo is a framed cover of a Playboy cover. This image says absolutely everything about how inequality is maintained and how systems continue to discriminate and ‘other’ those who do not come from privilege. NO MORE.