Slapstick Comedy

TOM PAULUS is Assistant Professor in Cinema and Theater Studies at the University of Antwerp and the organizer of "(Another) Slapstick Symposium." ROB KING is Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies and History at the University of Toronto and the author of The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (2009).

• Introduction: Restoring Slapstick to the Historiography of American Film Tom Paulus and Rob King Part One: Originality and Adaptation1. The Good Thieves: On the Origins of Situation Comedy in the British Music Hall Bryony Dixon 2. D. W. Griffith Shapes Slapstick Barry Salt 3. Genre Parody and Comedic Burlesque: Keystone’s Meta-Cinematic Satires Simon Joyce4. Both Sides of the Camera: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle’s Evolution at Keystone Joanna E. Rapf5. Mud Pies and Tears: Little Mary’s Funny Side Anke Brouwers Part Two: Mechanics and Modernity6. Mack Sennett vs. Henry Ford Eileen Bowser7. "Uproarious Inventions": The Keystone Film Company, Modernity, and the Art of the Motor Rob King8. Mechanisms of Laughter: The Devices of Slapstick Tom Gunning9. Slapstick Skyscrapers: An Architecture of Attractions Steven Jacobs10. California Slapstick Revisited Charles WolfePart Three: Bodies and Performance11. Dancing on Fire and Water: Charlot and L’Esprit Nouveau Amy Sargeant12. Splashes of Fun and Beauty: Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties Hilde D’Haeyere13. Back to the "Slap": Slapstick’s Hyperbolic Gesture and the Rhetoric of Violence Muriel Andrin14. The Art of Imitation: The Originality of Charlie Chaplin and Other Moving-Image Myths Jennifer M. Bean