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Beck Krefting is a Professor in the American Studies Department and Director of the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning. She is affiliate faculty to Gender Studies, Black Studies, Intergroup Relations, and Media and Film Studies at Skidmore College. Her monograph, All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents (Johns Hopkins), charts the history and economy of “charged humor” or stand-up comedy aimed at social justice. She is a contributing author to numerous edited collections, some of which include: Hysterical!: Women in American Comedy, The Joke Is On Us: Political Comedy in (Late) Neoliberal, Taking a Stand: American Stand-up Comedians as Public Intellectuals, and Punching Up: Stand-Up Comedy Speaking Truth to Power. She has published widely on Tasmanian comedian Hannah Gadsby, including in special issues in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Studies in American Humor, and the European Journal of American Studies. Most recent publications include chapters in the edited collections, The Oxford Handbook of Screen Comedy, and The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy. Beck has been invited to speak about her research at colleges and universities domestically and internationally, most recently at universities in Germany and Hungary. Her current book project is titled: When Comedy Kills: Racialized and Gendered Violence in the Wake of Laughter.