Satirical news is a type of humorous media that mixes parody and satire to critique contemporary figures, events, and situations (Ermida, 2012; McClennen & Maisel, 2014; Peters, 2013). In addition to satirical television news programs like The Daily Show, satirical news websites such as "The Daily Mash," "The Onion," and…

This mixed-methods study explores how the use of satirical news videos contributes to student engagement with information literacy (IL) instruction. The sample was drawn from first-year undergraduate students in for-credit IL courses. Overall, the use of satirical news videos improved student engagement with, and enjoyment of, IL topics. Given the…

While humor has long been documented as a useful teaching tool, it is almost entirely untheorized in terms of its potential for multicultural education. Specifically, the learning opportunities that racial comedic media offer in multicultural and anti-racist coursework is a particularly under-studied area, while research in this vein has great…

The BBC Radio 4 comedy-drama "A Higher Education" was written in 1999 to present a satire of a dysfunctional and cash-strapped university (Northfield) led by the egotistical and amoral Head of Drama, Don Crookfield (played by Rik Mayall). For those of us passionately engaged in the provision of higher education today, the satire also…

With the rise of biopolitical modernity, states justify both the existence of zombies and their monopoly on coercive violence via an imperative to care for the populations within their purview. But biopolitics' intrinsic link to the rise of a neoliberal model of governance, demonstrated by Foucault (2008), places a contradiction at the heart…

From the frequency of the racially motivated and racially justified slayings of black youth to the increased popularity of blatantly derisive racist humor, the enactment of race and racism appears to have become more defiantly overt and unapologetic. Consider the slayings of Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, and Jordan Davis, whose armed white…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

This qualitative study explored diverse college students' perspectives on the portrayal of college life in recent popular films. Results from this study suggest that White college students dismiss stereotypes as comedic satire whereas their non-White peers readily identify the influence of negative media representations upon their academic and…

This paper examines Michael Young's 1958 dystopia, "The Rise of the Meritocracy". In this book, the word "meritocracy" was coined and used in a pejorative sense. Today, however, meritocracy represents a positive ideal against which we measure the justice of our institutions. This paper argues that, when read in the twenty-first century, Young's…

The occasional role of humor as a vehicle for moral criticism is investigated. I begin by distinguishing between this particular role and the other kinds of ways in which humor and amusement might be regarded through a moral lens, consider historical approaches to humor that corroborate the kind of role for it on which my investigation focuses,…

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the teaching of literature with a competency-based approach. This is exemplified by means of a thorough study of a poetic duel between two relevant eighteenth-century writers, Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and more specifically, by means of the satires entitled respectively "The Lady's…

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a parody is "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule." A parody is a respectful yet critical satire, takeoff, or spoof of an original. In literature, a parody is when a person imitates an author's style or work to ridicule or…

Satire, as a mode, is not frequently employed in Chinese narratives. "Cat Country," or "Mao Cheng Ji," written by Lao She (pen name of Shu Qing Chun, 1898--1966) has come under much attack of its literary values. Whereas most critics have no doubt that this work sets out to satirize China through the portrayal of a society of…

This paper is based on a recently published book, "Educating Against Extremism" (Davies, "Educating Against Extremism," 2008), which explores the potential role of schools in averting the more negative and violent forms of extremism in a country. It examines the nature of extremism; identity formation and radicalisation; religious belief, faith…

In this paper I explore the popular Australian television character of Ja'mie King--a teenage private school girl created and performed by male comedian Chris Lilley. I conceptualise Lilley's satire as a public pedagogy of young femininity. My reading of his satire responds to recent feminist scholarship around young femininities and "girl…