Your SIG Steering Committee has been brainstorming useful functions of our new blog. In addition to soliciting short thinkpieces, announcements and posts from our illustrious membership, we also decided it would be helpful to post round-ups of links pertaining to issues of interest. These round-ups will include a short description of the issue and links to particularly generative or thought-provoking work on the subject. The lists will focus primarily on shorter non-academic or accessible academic articles pitched to a more general readership.
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This week's topic is one that has generated an obscene amount of recent coverage: the humor of, surrounding, and aimed at Trump. These pieces range from debates about the most potent forms of oppositional humor to the continued usefulness of political satire, to examples of Trump's own [problematic] sense of humor (or lack thereof), and thereby take part in the ongoing conversation about the role of humor in the Trump era. We've organized the pieces around three central debates: 1) Is satire the most potent comedic mode of activism and resistance? What are the limits and potentials of satire in the age of Trump? Are there other modes of humor that might be even more useful than political satire? Maggie Hennefeld's,"Laughter in the Age of Trump," for Flow Journal Jonathan Coe's "Will Satire Save Us in the Age of Trump?" for The Guardian Andrew Kahn, How a Few Weird, Surrealist Comedians Are Proving that Trump Is Not Actually Immune to Satire" for Slate
Andy Hughes's "Why Vic Berger is the Perfect Satirist for the Trump Era" for Splitsider.
2) Did televised comedy contribute to the election of Donal Trump? If so, can it still fuel the resistance?
Emily Nussbaum's "How Jokes Won the Election" for The New Yorker
Caitlin Flanagan's "How Late Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump" for The Atlantic.
3) How does Trump use comedic rhetoric? Should what he does be considered "humor" Why or why not?
Chris Cillizza's "Donald Trump Likes to Joke About a Lot of Things That Aren't Funny" for CNN
Sophia Mcclennen's "Is Dead Donald Trump funny? Understanding Gallows Humor in the Trump Era" for Salon.
Please feel free to use the comments to suggest future topics or to add to our lists!