Description:

Throughout the academic year, the Center for Latinx Digital Media invites you to a series of weekly seminars held over Zoom on Thursdays. You can now register (click here) to the upcoming seminar of the Winter 2022 quarter, happening on Thursday, January 13, at 12-1 PM US CT. Professor Amanda R. Martinez (Davidson College) will give a presentation entitled “Latinx Audiences & Laughter: The Power & Limits of Stereotype Humor.”

Abstract: Diverse audiences enjoy comedy in mass and social media for many reasons, including escapist pleasure, catharsis for harsh realities, critiquing absurdities, solidifying a group’s sense of community, and softening intergroup divides to accentuate commonalities. This presentation centers how Latinx media audiences interpret tensions between the powerful potential and tricky limitations in edgy entertainment content that invokes stereotypes about Latinx people as the targets of jokes. Themes highlight the various communication elements that dictate stereotype comedy's impact among Latinx audiences and in their interpersonal communication with others.

Amanda R. Martinez, Ph.D. is an associate professor and chair of the department of Communication Studies at Davidson College. She studies media and communication focusing on the underrepresented, identity, stereotyping, entertainment, and inter-group dynamics. Her publications appear in peer reviewed journals and edited books. She co-edited Latina/o/x Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice (2019) and co-edits the Cultural Media Studies book series (Peter Lang Publishing).

This event is co-sponsored by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Department of Radio/Television/Film, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and the Latina and Latino Studies Program.