Building on the author’s PhD thesis on “the British cultural and imaginative engagements with Persia in the nineteenth century” (vi), the volume charts “the diversity of perceptions associated with Persia in Victorian literary culture” (2). It focuses on poetry as the medium through which to survey the Victorian conception of Persia. It consists…[Read more]

I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to
raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors
of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people
up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious…[Read more]

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and u…[Read more]

“Out of Sorts: A Queer Crip in the Archive” analyzes the archive story of a queer, crip, wheelchair-using researcher at a U.S. archive. The article considers the archive as a material site where disability studies and disability history are practised; crip time and crip knowledge; the experience of feeling out of sorts; and the tension between the…[Read more]

“Out of Sorts: A Queer Crip in the Archive” analyzes the archive story of a queer, crip, wheelchair-using researcher at a U.S. archive. The article considers the archive as a material site where disability studies and disability history are practised; crip time and crip knowledge; the experience of feeling out of sorts; and the tension between the…[Read more]

It is trivially true that comedians make jokes and thus are not serious; they are “just playing.” But watching Louis CK, especially his performances in Chewed Up, Shameless, and Hilarious, it is evident that he has more in mind than simply getting his audience to frivolously guffaw. I will make the case that this is so given the content of som…[Read more]

What has proportion to do with humor or irony? And what do either of these have to do with being human? Jokes, laughter, and funniness connote excess, exaggeration, incongruity, dissonance, etc., the opposite of proportion–balance, symmetry, Aristotle’s golden mean. Yet, The Philosopher maintains, the wit has found the ideal moderate position b…[Read more]

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be…[Read more]

This essay traces the development of the right-hand inscription (zuoyouming 座右銘) from its birth in the second century CE through its culmination as a complex literary subgenre in the tenth. Over the course of these eight centuries, right-hand inscriptions were used by some of the most prominent poets of their respective eras, including Cui Yuan…[Read more]

Was Swift correct that “reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Letter to a Young Gentleman)? If so, what recourse is there to change attitudes especially among those who continue to fervently believe unjustified claims and act upon them in a way that affects other people? I will answer the…[Read more]

This chapter will focus on the overlap and benefits of a humorous and philosophical attitude toward the world and our place in it. The first part of this chapter’s title borrows from Kierkegaard and before him the Christian apologist Turtullian, who once quipped about the central contradictory tenets of Christianity, in putatively ironic f…[Read more]

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as…[Read more]

I argue that the overt subjugation in the system of American slavery and its subsequent effects offer a case study for an existentialist analysis of freedom, oppression and humor. Concentrating on the writings and experiences of Frederick Douglass and the existentialists Simone De Beauvoir and Lewis Gordon, I investigate how the concepts of…[Read more]

In the first part of this paper, I will briefly introduce the concept of incongruity and its relation to humor and seriousness, connecting the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer and the contemporary work of John Morreall. I will reveal some of the relations between Schopenhauer’s notion of “seriousness” and the existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartr…[Read more]

In this paper I borrow from Maria Lugones’ work on playful ” world-traveling ” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of ” double consciousness ” to make the case that humor can facilitate an openness and cooperative attitude among an otherwise closed, even adversarial audience. I focus on what I call ” subversive ” humor, that which is employed by or on…[Read more]

This paper begins by taking seriously former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ response in his What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? to systematic violence and oppression. He claims that direct argumentation is not the ideal mode of resistance to oppression: ” At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.” I…[Read more]

This paper investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the paper will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment…[Read more]

There seems to be a continuum between Fernando Pessoa’s metadrama of heteronyms and his strict-sense plays, but this is more hypothesis than theory, because Pessoa’s dramas—notwithstanding the editions of Teatro Estático (2017) and Fausto (2018)—are still largely unknown. Written between 1903–1908, the tragedy of Marino is the earliest of Pessoa’…[Read more]

Tsao, Hung-ping 曹 恆 平 (2021). Evolutionary Mathematics and Art for Bilingual Poems. In: “Evolutionary Progress in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM)”, Wang, Lawrence K. 王 抗 曝 and Tsao, Hung-ping 曹 恆 平 (editors). Volume 3, Number 3, March 2021; 43 pages. Lenox Institute Press, Newtonville, NY, 12128-0405, USA.…[Read more]

The aim of this article is to challenge heteronormative as well as homonormative practices in English language teaching. In doing so, the paper demonstrates that both complete absence of LGBTQI+ references in ELT materials, as well as recent attempts to provide more inclusive approaches to materials design and classroom practices, can be…[Read more]