Race Riots: Comedy and Ethnicity in Modern British Fiction

by Michael L. Ross

Ross examines racial humour as a manifestation of post-colonialism and questions contemporary critiques of "political correctness." Looking at cartoons from pre-World War II issues of Punch, Ross shows how disdain for non-Europeans plays a key role in period British humour and links this idea to the racial humour in the work of Evelyn Waugh and Joyce Cary. He also demonstrates how these assumptions are later turned on their heads by writers such as Salman Rushdie.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2006

About the author

Michael Ross received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 1996. From 1996 to 2001 he was an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also spent the 2000 calendar year as a Visiting Scholar at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and Jakarta, Indonesia. He is now Professor of Political Science, and Director of the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

His research deals with political economy, democratization, natural resources, and poverty in the developing world - particularly (but not exclusively) in Southeast Asia. His main project is a book on the "resource curse" that explains why countries with lots of natural resource wealth tend to do worse than countries with with resource wealth.

His 2008 article, "Oil, Islam, and Women," received the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association, for the best article published in the American Political Science Review.

Chair of UCLA International Development Studies Interdepartmental Program 2004-2008. Director, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 2007-present.