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Title: Purposeful Humour: Laughter and Ethnicity in Michele Serros’ How to Be a Chicana Role Model

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2019

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Abstract: A Chicano/a is someone who lives in contact with two different cultures: the Mexican and the Anglo-American. Thus, Chicanism is usually referred to in terms of duality, fluidity, transculturalism, alterity, mestizaje (Anzaldúa) or hybridity (Bhabha). However, ethnic identification is overall an open conception which depends on individual performance. Humour can seize the potential of Chicanism’s constructed nature to de-construct and re-define its parameters, and thus work as a fundamental instrument for individual and collective change. Diverse theories on humour’s mechanisms (relief and incongruity theories, the carnivalesque; the “antirhetoric” of humour [Gilbert] and sympathy theory [O’Donnell]) disclose the usefulness of laughter as a therapeutic strategy, as a tool for intercultural dialogue and social change, and a form of resilience or resistance. This essay is concerned with how Michele Serros employs humour with social aims in How to Be a Chicana Role Model (2000). She foments intra and intercultural dialogue, promotes a sense of community, and destabilizes pre-hold racist conceptions —in this sense, special attention will be paid to the use of irony and the mockery of racist discourses. As the essay concludes, through a comic genre, Serros enters the mainstream and stands as a subject advocating for freedom of self-definition.

Url: https://zaguan.unizar.es/record/85749/files/TAZ-TFG-2019-1392.pdf

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Authors: Beltrán Gracia, Carmen

Institution: Universidad Zargoza

Department: English

Advisor: Silvia Martínez Falquina

Degree: BA

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Pages: 33

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

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