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ABSTRACT
Sarah Silverman is an especially significant case study for scholars interested in gender and humour because she represents a turning point in the history of women's comedy. During the stand-up comedy boom of the late 1980s, a greater number of women began performing stand-up comedy than ever before, and their performances served as a catalyst for increased scholarly attention to women's humour. By the mid-1990s, a consensus had formed amongst feminist humour scholars that women adopt markedly different humour styles than their male counterparts. In this article, we argue that none of the usual generalizations about women's humour are applicable to Sarah Silverman. On the other hand, because she has failed to play by traditional ‘rules’ of women's comedy, Silverman has received more than her fair share of criticism. We conclude our article by arguing that critics have been especially critical of Silverman because they have failed to distinguish between the performer and her comic persona(s).