This comparative ethnic American cultures course examines how contemporary American comedians, fiction writers, visual artists, independent filmmakers, feminist and transgendered comics deploy the language of comedy to invoke serious social matters in contemporary American life such as racism, immigration, homophobia, class biases against the poor and the undocumented, misogyny, war and other burning issues of the day. We will explore how the ends of comedy are more than laughter and how comedy confronts political issues that are constitutive of and threatening to the U.S. body politic.