Home » May Term 2009

JNST 000A- This is Not a Course: Satire, Parody, Irony

This is Not a Course: Satire, Parody, Irony

Magritte: This is not a Pipe

Sharon Oster & Greg Salyer

Days: M/T/W/TH
Time: 10:00 am- 1:00 p.m.
Units: 3
Location: Hall of Letters, Room 211

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Course Description [menu]

Umberto Eco has said that the only way to speak seriously today is with irony. No wonder, then, that so many people get their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report instead of the networks. In this course we explore the subtle dynamics of satire, tracing its history back to ancient Greece and Rome and exploring its influence in contemporary culture. But this is not an historical survey; after all, it's not even a course. So what we will do is read and watch a lot of satire and look for irony and parody, and most of that today comes through media. We will want to ask how all this works and why. We will want to take ourselves too seriously and to mock those who are not as brilliant as we are.

Biographies [menu]

Sharon Oster

My scholarly interests focus on representations of displaced peoples in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature: immigrants, refugees, Jews in Diaspora, and cosmopolitans, and how they complicate our understanding of the human relationship to time and place. I like teaching American literature across the board, but especially texts that challenge the limits of language, of our ethical sensibilities, and our imaginations—topics like magic, murder, mortality, madness and the darker sides of love. I occasionally teach even fun topics, so long as they stretch the mind and reveal the powerful capacity of words. In my classes, we usually explore the complexities of identity and experience, of ethical judgment, and the conflicts between extreme individualism and social belonging. I teach courses in immigrant writing and experience, urban literature, American Realism, American Jewish literature, and literature of the Jewish Holocaust. My current book project explores how the figure of the “Jew” in late nineteenth-century American literature—the “outsider within” a given literary world—brings with it a new relation to time and space, thereby transforming the value systems of that world, and adding a sacred dimension to secular literature.

Greg Salyer

Greg Salyer, The Slayer, is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion in the Johnston Center. He is full of shit most of the time, which is why he likes satire, parody, and irony. He believes in the soul, the man, the woman, the hard look in a man's eye, the small of a woman's back, the three-point shot, scones, good single malt scotch, that the novels of Tom Wolfe are self-indulgent, overrated crap. He believes that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should be in jail and that Leonard Peltier should be free. He believes there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing reality television and the electoral college. He believes in the sweet spot, the tao, ignoring Christmas altogether, and he believes in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. He believes that if you know where he stole these lines from, then you're into good movies and understand parody.

Texts, Readings, Viewing [menu]

Texts

Readings

Television

Internet/Other

Radio

Film

Assignments [menu]

Weekly writing:

Satire is a sophisticated artistic genre, one that relies heavily upon our knowledge of what is being satirized in order to understand it. Satire typically gestures to its object of critique through cultural, political, literary and historical references. If we don’t “get” the references, it’s likely we won’t understand the satirical dimension of the work. Therefore, to clarify such references, as well as to fulfill the course writing requirement in a way that structures the course and our daily discussions, you are asked to participate in a discussion forum. You will research and contextualize in writing a topic or topics that grows out of our daily reading of assigned course literature.

Your posts will respond to questions like: What topic, social ill, cultural event, political  decision, or point of view, etc., is being satirized in this work? What are the debates surrounding this phenomenon, and which side of the issue is being criticized? What does the satirist want to reform? What does the satirical piece require us to know in order to understand how it works? We then encourage you to make connections between historical and contemporary satires on a given issue (or parallel issue), and discuss the treatments comparatively in your posts to the forum.

 

Beginning Tuesday, April 28, develop your posts over the course of the term. They should represent thoughtful engagement of the material we have covered in the course, in the form of close reading, or explication. They should give you a chance to comment in depth and at length about the text, its cultural references, and the issues it raises. Beyond that restriction you can be as creative as you dare.  Feel free to link your posts to other websites; to post images, media clips, and news articles to your entries; and to comment extensively on issues pertinent to your topic(s). 

 

We will begin each class session with a discussion of the entries and look at them together in class. Since we won’t have time to discuss everyone’s entries, we will need to develop some criteria as a class for how we will select those we read each day.

 

The forum has no particulate page limit, although it should constitute at least 10 pages of writing. We hope you will be excited by the project and therefore motivated to explore your topic(s) thoroughly. Please note that format and content matter in how we will evaluate these. Your writing style can be less formal than a formal essay, but if you post an entry that is not well-organized and well-written we will be less impressed.  Entries that engage with the language and literary methods of assigned readings, go far to research references, and articulate analysis creatively, clearly, and professionally (grammatically correct, proofread, with consideration for reader) will receive the highest evaluations.  All students need to visit – and comment on – at least 5 other posts from this class. Please divide this up so that you respond to two posts by Thursday, May 7, two by May 14, and at least one more by the last day of class.  Feel free to visit everyone’s posts and comment extensively throughout the term!

Simply log in (or register for a new account if you haven't done so), and go here to begin reading and posting.

Your posts are public and are designed to be shared with your classmates and the world. 

Final Project:

Your final project will represent a comprehensive account of your learning in the course and my take any form you deem appropriate provided it engages most of the texts of the course and your own reactions to them. For example, you might want to do an updated version of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary or produce your own episode of The Daily Show. The last week of classes will be devoted to student presentations of final projects.

 

Schedule [menu]

Understanding Satire

Monday, April 27

Tuesday, April 28

Wednesday, April 29 (Contracts Due)

 

 

Thursday, April 30

Satires of Class, Gender, and Politics [menu]

  • Student Presentations [menu]
  • Monday, May 18
    • Alec
    • Sharon is around on email today if you need to talk to her or get feedback on writing
    • Last week's writing is due today if you didn't turn it in on Friday
    • Reflective statements on creative final projects must be 3-4 pages. You should comment on process, choices, and final product, and they must be turned in with your presentations.
  • Tuesday, May 19
    • Prickly Heat and Phillip Bouley
    • Torin
    • Megan
    • Chrystal
  • Wednesday, May 20 
    • Michael
    • Emmett
    • Katie
    • Rick and Sydni
    • Whitney
  • Thursday, May 21: Final Exam
    • Sarah, Claire, Daniel, Kalina
    • Chris
    • Michelle
    • Mark
    • Alexandra