M Dalebout

daleboum@whitman.edu
Olin Hall 146
509-527-5164

Professor Dalebout’s research examines contemporary forms of media participation in democratic cultures. They are especially concerned with self-presentational practices that have the potential to be culturally transformative for people whose experiences are marginalized due to representationalist treatments of identity. Their work has been published in Studies in American Humor, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies and Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, and they are a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the current Vice President of the American Humor Studies Association.

Professor Dalebout’s courses examine how people enunciate, acknowledge, and negotiate difference and its challenges in everyday life. Their courses (see below) draw on insights and examples from many disciplines in order to understand how humanity's ineluctable, agonistic relationship with technology undergirds structures of personal identity and collective action. Their classes ask students to think critically and creatively about human experiences, especially ones informed by intersections of gender, sexuality, race, ability, and class in today’s world.

Professor Dalebout’s current projects analyze stand-up comedians’ digitally mediated acts of self-presentation, arguing that the political efficacy of comic voices in the age of the online digital public sphere is about the phenomenon of ‘standing up,’ or constructing identities by refashioning worlds we share with others, as distinct from ‘speaking up’ about prefabricated notions of democratic identities, even intersectional ones.

Ph.D. Rhetoric
University of California, Berkeley
2020

M.A. Rhetoric
University of California, Berkeley
2016

B.A. Rhetoric
University of California, Berkeley
2013

A.A. Arts and Humanities
Ventura Community College
2011

Rhetoric & Film Studies
Whitman College
2001-2003

Publications

2024. “Stand-Up Rerouting, or Cultural Transformation in Ali Wong’s Bawdy Comic Critique,” Studies in American Humor 10, no. 2 (2024): 251–278.

2022. Co-authored with Renee Pastel. “Truth and Truths-to-Come: Investigating Viral Rumors in Q: Into the Storm,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 11, no. 1 (2022): 128-149.

2021. “‘Which One of You is the Twelve-Year-Old Boy?’: Children’s Humour, Wittgensteinian Jokes, and The Sack Lunch Bunch,” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 13, no. 1 (2021): 237-258.

2020. “Review of The Dark Side of Stand-up Comedy, edited by Patrice A. Oppliger and Eric Shouse,” Studies in American Humor 7, no. 1 (2021): 251-254. 2019. “Review of Gimbel, Steven. Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy,” Studies in American Humor 5, no. 1 (2019): 247-250 .

2019. “Review of Gimbel, Steven. Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy,” Studies in American Humor 5, no. 1 (2019): 247-250 .

Presentations

“Em’s Oppositional Gaze, OJ’s Be/holding Glance: Spectacle and Spectatorship in NOPE,” SCMS Conference, “Representation Reimagined: The Screening of Political Participation in Contemporary Films Panel Chair,” April 2024.

“Authenticity, Im/materiality, and Comic Media,” AHSA & SCMS SIG Conference, July 2023.

“Screening ourselves: Considering Technology and Media Literacy in Stand-up Performance,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, March 2021.

“Bawdy Belly Laughter: Self-Representation and Social Transformation in Ali Wong’s Stand-up Comedy,” American Humor Studies Association “Slipping on Banana Peels” Panel, Modern Language Association Conference, Toronto, January 2021.

“Scandalization and Social Repair in Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference “Scandal!” Virtual Conference/Jacksonville, FL. November 2020.