2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Nov 21, 2024

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

MCA 218 - Meme Culture and Comedy Theory

Internet Memes are an unavoidable, arguably quintessential form of contemporary digital culture, in which repetition and variation produce desire, enjoyment, and optimally laughter. But memes have also emerged as a dark political force, used in calculated ways to inculcate viewers, build ideological consensus, and (arguably) to sway elections. What are memes doing for us in 2020 and how did we get here? This course directs a psychoanalytic lens at postmillennial “meme culture” in order not only to understand our love for memes as a communication medium, but also to understand the nature of human subjectivity vis-à-vis humor, jokes, and laughter. The tradeoff of this course is that students will be enabled to investigate a subject of daily interest to them-internet memes-but will also be required to read difficult works of critical theory, and to probe the pre-history of memes in such forms as Victorian postcards, 1970s CB culture, and standup comedy. Daily readings, weekly essays, and a final research project.

Prerequisites: MCA 101 or permission

Anticipated Terms Offered: bi annually