The first textbook to explore diversity by demonstrating how satirical content can advance the discussion and change attitudes Engaging in diversity and promoting inclusion means working to remove institutional inequities and actively assist those who have suffered from these inequities. In our changing media and cultural environment, satire has emerged as an increasingly popular approach for promoting diversity and inclusion. Effective satire highlights the absurdity of marginalization processes, but misinterpretation can potentially reinforce historical power dynamics and perpetuate marginalization. Diversity and Satire examines how satire in both traditional media and new spaces reinforces or disrupts issues of marginalization in the United States. Critically analyzing many different forms of satire, this innovative textbook helps students understand what makes effective satire, describe the value of satirical content to others, and recognize how satirical artifacts advance or hinder efforts to diversify institutions. Beginning with an introduction to satire and how it can drive conversations about diversity, the text addresses how satire can be used to address historical discriminatory practices. Each chapter features satirical artifacts that contextualize the material as well as practical advice and tips to consider when engaging with satirical content and distinguishing satire. This textbook also: Illustrates the difference between satire that disrupts discourse and content that merely reinforces stereotypes Explains the historical relevance of satire and its importance in addressing the marginalization of certain populations Describes the nature of satire in the changing media and cultural environment of the twenty-first century Features engaging case studies drawn from a wide variety of satirical sources such as The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah), The Onion, Saturday Night Live, The Hunger Games, Weird Al Yankovic, Family Guy, Rick and Morty, Sinclair Lewis, MTV, and College Humor Based on the author’s popular course at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization is an important resource for students, instructors, and general readers looking to explore disparities related to Class, Gender, Sexuality, and Race through the lens of satire.

Satire & The State focuses on performance-based satire, most often seen in sketch comedy, from 1960 to the present, and explores how sketch comedy has shaped the way Americans view the president and themselves. Numerous sketch comedy portrayals of presidents that have seeped into the American consciousness – Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, and Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush all worked to shape the actual politician’s public persona. The book analyzes these sketches and many others, illustrating how comedy is at the heart of the health and function of American democracy. At its best, satire aimed at the presidency can work as a populist check on executive power, becoming one of the most important weapons for everyday Americans against tyranny and political corruption. At its worst, satire can reflect and promote racism, misogyny, and homophobia in America. Written for students of Theatre, Performance, Political Science, and Media Studies courses, as well as readers with an interest in political comedy, Satire & The State offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between comedy and the presidency, and the ways in which satire becomes a window into the culture, principles, and beliefs of a country.

Rather, it is a collection of episodic little histories.

Satire is clearly one of today’s most controversial socio-cultural topics. In this edited volume, The Power of Satire, it is studied for the first time as a dynamic, discursive mode of performance with the power of crossing and contesting cultural boundaries. The collected essays reflect the fundamental shift from literary satire or straightforward literary rhetoric with a relatively limited societal impact, to satire’s multi-mediality in the transnational public space where it can cause intercultural clashes and negotiations on a large scale. An appropriate set of heuristic themes – space, target, rhetoric, media, time – serves as the analytical framework for the investigations and determines the organization of the book as a whole. The contributions, written by an international group of experts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, manifest academic standards with a balance between theoretical analyses and evaluations on the one hand, and in-depth case studies on the other.

The classic collection of wildly inventive and bitingly satirical tales of post-revolutionary Russia: “amusing and excellent reading” (Isaac Bashevis Singer). This famous collection of Soviet satire from 1918 to 1963 devastatingly lampoons the social, economic, and cultural changes wrought by the Russian Revolution. Among the seventeen boldly outspoken writers represented here are Mikhail Bulgakov, Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Valentin Katayev, and Yury Kazakov. Whether the stories and novellas collected here take the form of allegory, fantasy, or science fiction, the results are ingenious, critical, and hilariously timeless. “The stories in this collection tell the reader more about Soviet life than a dozen sociological or political tracts.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer “An altogether admirable collection . . . by the highly talented translator Mirra Ginsburg . . . Many of these stories and sketches are delicious, even—a miracle!—funny, and full of subtlety and intelligence.” —The New Leader “Hilarious entertainment. Beyond this it illuminates with the cruel light of satire the reality behind the pretentious façade of the Soviet state.” —Sunday Sun

This book attempts to grasp the recent paradigm shift in American politics through the lens of satire. It connects changes in the political and cultural landscape to corresponding shifts in the structure and organization of the media, in order to shed light on the evolution of political satire on late-night television. Satire is situated in its historical background to comprehend its movement away from the fringes of discourse to the very center of politics and the media. Beginning in the 1990s, certain trends such as technological advances, media consolidation, and the globalization of communications reinforced each other, paving the way for satire to claim a prized spot in the visual media—a tendency that only gained strength after September 11. While the Bush presidency presented itself as an apposite target for satirists, their stronghold on American television was made possible by a number of transitions in broader culture, which are encapsulated in the shrinking space available for political engagement under neoliberalism. This largely underestimated development can be understood through the framework of postmodernism, which focuses on the relationship between language, power, and the presentation of reality. These trends and transitions reached a climax in the 2016 election where President Trump was elected, embodying what can only be considered a significant turning point in American politics. The bigger narrative contains various subplots represented in the rise of the neoliberal economy, the acceptance of postmodernism as the dominant cultural code, and the role of the voyeur superseding that of the engaged citizen. It is only through understanding each of these pieces and connecting them that we can comprehend the current political transformation. The present moment may feel like a golden age of satire, and it may well be, but this book addresses the hardest questions about the realities behind such a claim: what can we conclude about when and how satire is effective, judging by the history of this genre in its various incarnations, and how can the “apolitical” postmodern media landscape be reconciled with what the best of this genre has had to offer during times of political duress?

This set offers a representitive collection of the verse satire of the Romantic period, published between the mid-1780s and the mid-1830s. As well as two single-author volumes, from William Gifford and Thomas Moore, there is also a wealth of rare, unedited material.

Postcolonial Satire: Indian Fiction and the Reimagining of Menippean Satire positions postcolonial South Asian satiric fiction in both the cutting-edge territory of political resistance writing and the ancient tradition of Menippean satire. Postcolonial Satire aims to disrupt the relationship between postcolonial literature and magic realism, by discussing the work of writers such as G. V. Desani, Aubrey Menen, Salman Rushdie, and Irwin Allan Sealy as one movement into the entirely subversive realm of satire. Indian fiction, and the fiction of other colonized cultures, can be re-construed through the lens of satire as openly critical of a broad spectrum of political and cultural issues. Employing the strengths of postcolonial theory and criticism, Postcolonial Satire expands upon the postcolonial works of these authors by analyzing them as satire, rather than magical realism with satirical elements.

Since 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.

Engaging with Elizabethan understandings of masculinity, this book examines representations of manhood during the short-lived vogue for verse satire in the 1590s, by poets like John Donne, John Marston, Everard Guilpin and Joseph Hall. While criticism has often used categorical adjectives like "angry" and "Juvenalian" to describe these satires, this book argues that they engage with early modern ideas of manhood in a conflicted and contradictory way that is frequently at odds with patriarchal norms even when they seem to defend them. The book examines the satires from a series of contexts of masculinity such as husbandry and early modern understandings of age, self-control and violence, and suggests that the images of manhood represented in the satires often exist in tension with early modern standards of manhood. Beyond the specific case studies, while satire has often been assumed to be a "male" genre or mode, this is the first study to engage more in depth with the question of how satire is invested with ideas and practices of masculinity.