Katherine Cai is on stage, reminiscing about high school.
“My dad tried to teach me geometry. You know how that goes. The questions get more and more difficult and Dad gets more and more frustrated, which leads to both of us having a crisis.”
“We’re all just victims of word problems.”
Laughs ripple through the 100 or so students, faculty and friends in the audience. They can relate.
Cai, a UC Merced psychology major, is halfway through her standup comedy routine, a final performance for Writing 122. And she’s crushing it.
“I still have those geometry textbooks,” she says, gripping a microphone in one hand and her script in the other. “Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little nostalgic, I do a scavenger hunt to look for my tear stains.”
She looks at her script numerous times during the set, which she labeled “Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic.” And that’s fine; she wasn’t required to memorize the routine. The upper-division course is called Special Topics in Rhetoric, not How to Excel in Stand-up Comedy.
Yet there are several similarities between the curriculum and the profession. Workshopping storylines and punchlines with peers, for one. Tweaking timing and tone. Transforming self-confession into laughs. And in those laughs, receiving a reward for being vulnerable and keeping it real.
A central emotion in laughter — joy — was what Eileen Camfield was reaching for when she developed the course four years ago amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The writing studies teaching professor and her students were clawing their way through a thicket of uncertainty, remote instruction and emotional darkness.
“Students were disconnected, feeling this kind of learned helplessness. They were depressed,” she said. “So, I scratched my head and thought, ‘How can I counteract these negative trends?’”
The solution came from another section of Camfield’s resume. She is an expert in pedagogy, the study of the art of teaching. As interim director of UC Merced’s Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning , Camfield works with faculty and graduate students to develop curriculum and work on instruction techniques.
She determined the course had to be fun yet challenging, that it would draw from writing and persuasive speech but give each student their own start and finish points so achievement would be measured by individual effort rather than against the rest of the class. As the course attracts theater kids eager to perform along with students who have never faced an audience, the individualized, effort-based approach levels the playing field.
Camfield shows videos of professional comedians to give students ideas about what standup can be. Mike Birbiglia, one of the best storytellers in the business today, talks about the serious side of comedy. Tig Notaro gives a lesson of vulnerability, taking off her shirt halfway through a set to reveal the scars of a double mastectomy. Hannah Gadsby riffs about the funny side of autism.
Students quickly learn, if they didn’t know already, that their lives are the best source of comedy. Talking about their fears, frustrations and triumphs — shaping memories into stories — is empowering, Camfield said.
“We acknowledge trauma, but then we find our way through it, to a place of healing,” Camfield said. “I have no illusions that the healing can be completed in a semester, but I hope this experience puts them on a trajectory of reclaiming the narratives of their lives.”
The course partly inspired a book written and edited by Camfield. “Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education: Uplifting Teaching and Learning for All” is scheduled to publish in February. A chapter that focuses on the course is co-written by Camfield and Josiah Beharry, a UC Merced graduate student and the current UC student regent .
As the classes progress in Special Topics in Rhetoric, students present their routines in small, supportive groups. Everyone gets feedback — suggestions on how to “funny it up.” Camfield said colleague Jenni Samuelson, a lecturer in music and performance, helped develop games and exercises for the course that sharpen improvisation skills.
There are four opportunities to absorb critiques and refine scripts into final presentations. In the course offered in spring 2024, students could perform the routines in front of the class or present them to a full audience onstage as part of the semester-ending Global Arts, Media and Writing Studies Showcase.
Six students leaped into the latter, grabbing a microphone and pacing the stage in SSB 160. Aaron Zirbel, a psychology and political science double major, led off with a routine called “Grow a Pair” (some of the students’ material was unapologetically NSFTS — Not Safe for This Story). Aliyah George, a sociology major, followed with “Unpopular Opinions.” George then passed the mic to Cai.
“I was terrified,” Cai said later. “If you look at videos you can see my hands shaking. But I also felt an immense amount of support from my classmates and Professor Camfield.
“I knew the performance would push me way out of my comfort zone, so I was surprised by how much fun I had despite all the stress leading up to it.”
Another performer that night was political science major Itzel Santos-Rivera, who riffed on her awkward and often uncomfortable years as a student in a Catholic school.
“My routine drew from the complexities of being sexualized at a young age and the harassment I experienced,” Santos-Rivera said. “I felt it was essential to highlight these topics, wrapped in humor, to spark awareness and dialogue.”
She said the atmosphere in the standup comedy course was always supportive and often electric.
“We engaged in creative writing that challenged us to explore our identities,” she said.
Everywhere she turned, classmates opened up, offering encouragement and taking risks.
“I still remember when one of them fully committed to an improvised skit as a chimpanzee, complete with sounds and movements,” she said. “I couldn't stop laughing.”
