Parody and Pedagogy in the Age of Neoliberalism

by Michael Richard Lucas

Parody and Pedagogy in the Age of Neoliberalism provides comic relief in a neoliberal era and argues that parody can be used to creatively benefit our practices of self-narration and quests for knowledge. This seriously playful book demonstrates how parody utilizes humor, play, and self-reflection to allow for a helpful alternative relationship to mistakes and our multifaceted self. The book works to delineate specific ways of viewing, studying, creating, and performing a particular form of humorous parody, and through pedagogical application, it balances practical hands-on examples via digital video creation with examples and exercises such as interrogating our creative histories and parodying them--either as a classroom exercise or in individual self-reflection. The core readership for this book is rhetoric and composition scholars researching continental philosophy, humor, and narrative theory, and it lends itself to classroom implementation for professors, as it brings together (often for the first time) major academic conversations on humor throughout philosophy, literary and cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies. Parody and Pedagogy in the Age of Neoliberalism is essential reading for undergraduate/graduate courses that feature humor, alternative forms of communication in the public sphere, alternative rhetorical strategies, and courses that focus on the importance of creativity and play in our daily lives and scholarship.

214 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2019

About the author

An Oregon native, the author moved to the east coast to complete graduate school degrees in the Humanities at fairly prestigious institutions. The author is currently tutoring part-time at a prep school in the south east while taking online community college courses for computer programing in order to purchase food and pay rent. At one point (in graduate school) the author taught fun and engaging college writing and literature courses that undergraduates genuinely enjoyed, and he published academic scholarship/presented at international conferences on rhetoric, parody, creativity, and continental philosophy. After graduate school, the author got snagged into an epically mismanaged post-doc that was delayed a full unpaid semester during which the author surprisingly became a stay at home father to a beautiful baby boy. The post-doc was then cut halfway through the following semester (no funds available?). Oddly disproportionate academic accolades withstanding, the author was (un?)surprisingly never hired as anything more than a temporary adjunct professor for a summer writing course at a state university in the north west (in all probability a one-time, very reluctant, sympathy favor). He died penniless and alone in a debtors’ prison off the coast of Australia. The author’s other works reside at: www.MichaelArtsGood.com.