Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellow
Madison Trusolino is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC funded dissertation is on women and LGBTQ+comedians’ experiences of work and resistance in the Toronto comedy scene. Madison has worked as a researcher on Cultural Workers’ Organize, a project that explores how cultural workers contribute to labour politics, and Closing the Gap, a research study led by the Canadian Live Music Association that examines the challenges and barriers that impede BIPOC music workers. Her work is forthcoming in a Canada Press anthology entitled Creative Industries in Canada.
Fellowship Project—Punching Up: Women & LGBTQ+ Comedians’ Experiences of Work and Resistance in Toronto’s Comedy Scene
My research examines the experiences of women and LGBTQ+ comedians in the Canadian comedy industry, which is dominated by cisgender, straight, white men. Based on qualitative interviews with 20 Toronto-based women and LGBTQ+ comedians and a study of the dynamics of comedy creation at different scales of production, I build a theoretical framework of resistance attending to workers’ formal and informal acts of resistance in comedy and the cultural industries generally. I argue that by broadening our conception of worker’s resistance from the margins, we gain a better understanding of workplace organizing under increasingly precarious conditions for marginalized cultural workers.