This course examines humor as a social, political, psychological, and communicative phenomenon, exploring how comedy operates within culture and structures of power. Students critically analyze humor across a range of media and forms, including stand-up comedy, satire, film and television, cartoons, comics, memes, advertising, and design. Through close analysis of these forms, the course asks who gets to joke, what can be joked about, why audiences laugh, and how humor can produce both belonging and exclusion.
The course considers humor’s role in navigating discomfort, fear, conflict, and crisis, as well as its capacity to challenge authority, negotiate identity, and reinforce or disrupt existing structures of power. Students engage with major theories of humor alongside historical and contemporary examples, developing skills in critical reading, textual and visual analysis, and research.
The pedagogical approach combines critical discussion, close analysis, research exercises, case studies, and creative experimentation. Students move from understanding theories and strategies of humor to examining how these operate differently across media and contexts, and ultimately apply their findings through an original creative intervention or expanded research project
