Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression, including The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons, are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities conveys how satire can contribute to the constru... more Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities conveys how satire can contribute to the construction of social subjects’ identities. It attempts to provide a theoretical ground for a novel understanding of the relationship between satire and identity by finding their common denominator, namely opposition, in order to explain the mechanism through which satire can form identity. After establishing the role of opposition in satire and identity construction through a detailed analysis of various theories, it will be argued that satire can contribute to the construction of racial, ethnic, national, religious, and gender identities. Several examples from British, Persian and ancient Roman literary traditions and different epochs illustrate the theoretical discussions. The prevalence of satire and the challenges that identity has encountered in our contemporary world guarantee the significance of this study and its socio-political implications.
This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children’s literatu... more This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children’s literature can map onto its gender politics through a comparative study of multimodal dynamics of Irish and Persian picturebooks. It builds upon the premise that children’s literature can play a significant role in sustainable education and forming pro-environmental values in the process of socialization during childhood. Oliver Jeffers’ The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) and Hoda Hadadi’s I’ll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020) are examined within the framework of environmental humanities for their verbal and pictorial depictions of the human-nature relationship. The findings convey that characters’ gender and sexual identities can impact their interactions with nature; at the same time, nature can clear a space for expressing and affirming underrepresented and historically marginalized gender and sexual identities in children’s literature through creative and dynamic multimodal interact...
This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children's literatu... more This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children's literature can map onto its gender politics through a comparative study of multimodal dynamics of Irish and Persian picturebooks. It builds upon the premise that children's literature can play a significant role in sustainable education and forming pro-environmental values in the process of socialization during childhood. Oliver Jeffers' The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) and Hoda Hadadi's I'll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020) are examined within the framework of environmental humanities for their verbal and pictorial depictions of the human-nature relationship. The findings convey that characters' gender and sexual identities can impact their interactions with nature; at the same time, nature can clear a space for expressing and affirming underrepresented and historically marginalized gender and sexual identities in children's literature through creative and dynamic multimodal interactions between the text and illustrations. A comparative analysis reveals that Jeffers challenges abstract, absolute masculinity and masculine arrogance and calls for reforming the notion of need in modern societies, while more playful and transgressive dynamics between the text and illustrations provide an effective tool for Hadadi who appropriates the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, a maverick female writer, to undermine the plots of male homo-sociality and erotic counterplotting with a subversive alternative to heteropatriarchy and anthropocentrism.
The European Journal of Humour Research, Mar 28, 2023
Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing... more Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Responding to concerns raised by Michael Billig (2018) regarding the functions of humour in capit... more Responding to concerns raised by Michael Billig (2018) regarding the functions of humour in capitalist organisations, this essay strives to convey how humour and satire can have liberating and empowering affordances for subjects in organisational contexts as they can potentially intervene in the negotiation and exercise of power through fostering negative dialectical thinking and estrangement. Revisiting the scepticism of Marcuse, Fromm, Horkheimer and Adorno toward humour, it strives to provide an initial theoretical framework to accommodate a more nuanced understanding of the functions of humour in power structures by locating it within the contingencies acknowledged by Frankfurt School critical theorists. Although humour can be co-opted to serve power and consolidate the status quo, it can also serve as a potential resistance strategy in capitalist societies and organisations.
Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels. Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the curr... more This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the current health crisis by investigating a corpus of humorous items, collected through a survey tool on the website of the University of Amsterdam between March and July 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows that humor was used as a coping and adaptive strategy in both contexts. Individual coping is more evident in the United States, where political criticism is frequently relegated to the media and press. This difference is partly due to censorship and similar impediments to the freedom of expression in Iran where the (traditional) media and press are either run or strictly regulated by the government. Two more themes were conspicuously more prevalent in U.S.-American humor: first, racism and xenophobia, especially directed against Asians; second, hoarding and scarcity of basic commodities, particularly toilet paper. While U.S. Americans and Iranians were frustrated by the inadequate responses of public officials, they found different strategies and outlets to express their frustrations. Economic and cultural differences also influenced the unfolding of the health crisis and its consequences in these two contexts, which explains the prominence of certain themes and motifs in the corpus.
This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the cu... more This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the current health crisis by investigating a corpus of humorous items, collected through a survey tool on the website of the University of Amsterdam between March and July 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows that humor was used as a coping and adaptive strategy in both contexts. Individual coping is more evident in the United States, where political criticism is frequently relegated to the media and press. This difference is partly due to censorship and similar impediments to the freedom of expression in Iran where the (traditional) media and press are either run or strictly regulated by the government. Two more themes were conspicuously more prevalent in U.S.-American humor: first, racism and xenophobia, especially directed against Asians; second, hoarding and scarcity of basic commodities, particularly toilet paper. While U.S. Americans and Iranians were frustrated by the inadequate responses of public officials, they found different strategies and outlets to express their frustrations. Economic and cultural differences also influenced the unfolding of the health crisis and its consequences in these two contexts, which explains the prominence of certain themes and motifs in the corpus.
Key Words:humor; satire; the United States of America; Iran; adaptive function; coping; COVID-19 pandemic
New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work st... more New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work style, structure and modus of organizations and society— on individual levels, this includes e.g. collaborative working, flexible working hours, and on organizational levels, e.g. featuring flat hierarchies, participatory decision-making. Contemporary corporations strive to orient toward the concept of new work to keep up with stakeholder demands, for instance in their branding strategies as an employer. However, studies on organizational practices indicate that alongside explicit values and agendas, organizations tend to slyly exert power to secure their (economic) interests. Constructive dismissal is one such instance where contractually protected employees are made to resign their positions because the work environment is altered to become increasingly unbearable. This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency and equality. The data contains long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations, especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal’, containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation effortlessly. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power.
This research employs the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to... more This research employs the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to convey how The Late Show with Stephen Colbert employs humor and satire with the aim of providing information, proffering injunctive norms, and modifying attitudes and subjective norms in its public audience, while exposing the inefficacy of behavioral controls and urging public authorities to adopt effective ones instead. In the earlier stages of the pandemic in the US, the Show primarily appealed to people to change their behavior through providing information, invoking injunctive norms and affiliations, foregrounding appropriate attitudes and subjective norms; at the same time, its repertoire included social and political satire drawing on organizational and institutional mechanisms of behavioral control. As the health crisis became increasingly politicized, the Show redirected its satire to policies and political figures and sought to change the behavior of policymakers in setting pr...
Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression, including The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons, are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities conveys how satire can contribute to the constru... more Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities conveys how satire can contribute to the construction of social subjects’ identities. It attempts to provide a theoretical ground for a novel understanding of the relationship between satire and identity by finding their common denominator, namely opposition, in order to explain the mechanism through which satire can form identity. After establishing the role of opposition in satire and identity construction through a detailed analysis of various theories, it will be argued that satire can contribute to the construction of racial, ethnic, national, religious, and gender identities. Several examples from British, Persian and ancient Roman literary traditions and different epochs illustrate the theoretical discussions. The prevalence of satire and the challenges that identity has encountered in our contemporary world guarantee the significance of this study and its socio-political implications.
This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children’s literatu... more This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children’s literature can map onto its gender politics through a comparative study of multimodal dynamics of Irish and Persian picturebooks. It builds upon the premise that children’s literature can play a significant role in sustainable education and forming pro-environmental values in the process of socialization during childhood. Oliver Jeffers’ The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) and Hoda Hadadi’s I’ll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020) are examined within the framework of environmental humanities for their verbal and pictorial depictions of the human-nature relationship. The findings convey that characters’ gender and sexual identities can impact their interactions with nature; at the same time, nature can clear a space for expressing and affirming underrepresented and historically marginalized gender and sexual identities in children’s literature through creative and dynamic multimodal interact...
This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children's literatu... more This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children's literature can map onto its gender politics through a comparative study of multimodal dynamics of Irish and Persian picturebooks. It builds upon the premise that children's literature can play a significant role in sustainable education and forming pro-environmental values in the process of socialization during childhood. Oliver Jeffers' The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) and Hoda Hadadi's I'll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020) are examined within the framework of environmental humanities for their verbal and pictorial depictions of the human-nature relationship. The findings convey that characters' gender and sexual identities can impact their interactions with nature; at the same time, nature can clear a space for expressing and affirming underrepresented and historically marginalized gender and sexual identities in children's literature through creative and dynamic multimodal interactions between the text and illustrations. A comparative analysis reveals that Jeffers challenges abstract, absolute masculinity and masculine arrogance and calls for reforming the notion of need in modern societies, while more playful and transgressive dynamics between the text and illustrations provide an effective tool for Hadadi who appropriates the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, a maverick female writer, to undermine the plots of male homo-sociality and erotic counterplotting with a subversive alternative to heteropatriarchy and anthropocentrism.
The European Journal of Humour Research, Mar 28, 2023
Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing... more Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Responding to concerns raised by Michael Billig (2018) regarding the functions of humour in capit... more Responding to concerns raised by Michael Billig (2018) regarding the functions of humour in capitalist organisations, this essay strives to convey how humour and satire can have liberating and empowering affordances for subjects in organisational contexts as they can potentially intervene in the negotiation and exercise of power through fostering negative dialectical thinking and estrangement. Revisiting the scepticism of Marcuse, Fromm, Horkheimer and Adorno toward humour, it strives to provide an initial theoretical framework to accommodate a more nuanced understanding of the functions of humour in power structures by locating it within the contingencies acknowledged by Frankfurt School critical theorists. Although humour can be co-opted to serve power and consolidate the status quo, it can also serve as a potential resistance strategy in capitalist societies and organisations.
Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address ... more Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises explores how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate ecological crises at individual and collective levels. Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the curr... more This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the current health crisis by investigating a corpus of humorous items, collected through a survey tool on the website of the University of Amsterdam between March and July 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows that humor was used as a coping and adaptive strategy in both contexts. Individual coping is more evident in the United States, where political criticism is frequently relegated to the media and press. This difference is partly due to censorship and similar impediments to the freedom of expression in Iran where the (traditional) media and press are either run or strictly regulated by the government. Two more themes were conspicuously more prevalent in U.S.-American humor: first, racism and xenophobia, especially directed against Asians; second, hoarding and scarcity of basic commodities, particularly toilet paper. While U.S. Americans and Iranians were frustrated by the inadequate responses of public officials, they found different strategies and outlets to express their frustrations. Economic and cultural differences also influenced the unfolding of the health crisis and its consequences in these two contexts, which explains the prominence of certain themes and motifs in the corpus.
This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the cu... more This essay compares and contrasts the responses of U.S.-American and Iranian citizens to the current health crisis by investigating a corpus of humorous items, collected through a survey tool on the website of the University of Amsterdam between March and July 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows that humor was used as a coping and adaptive strategy in both contexts. Individual coping is more evident in the United States, where political criticism is frequently relegated to the media and press. This difference is partly due to censorship and similar impediments to the freedom of expression in Iran where the (traditional) media and press are either run or strictly regulated by the government. Two more themes were conspicuously more prevalent in U.S.-American humor: first, racism and xenophobia, especially directed against Asians; second, hoarding and scarcity of basic commodities, particularly toilet paper. While U.S. Americans and Iranians were frustrated by the inadequate responses of public officials, they found different strategies and outlets to express their frustrations. Economic and cultural differences also influenced the unfolding of the health crisis and its consequences in these two contexts, which explains the prominence of certain themes and motifs in the corpus.
Key Words:humor; satire; the United States of America; Iran; adaptive function; coping; COVID-19 pandemic
New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work st... more New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work style, structure and modus of organizations and society— on individual levels, this includes e.g. collaborative working, flexible working hours, and on organizational levels, e.g. featuring flat hierarchies, participatory decision-making. Contemporary corporations strive to orient toward the concept of new work to keep up with stakeholder demands, for instance in their branding strategies as an employer. However, studies on organizational practices indicate that alongside explicit values and agendas, organizations tend to slyly exert power to secure their (economic) interests. Constructive dismissal is one such instance where contractually protected employees are made to resign their positions because the work environment is altered to become increasingly unbearable. This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency and equality. The data contains long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations, especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal’, containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation effortlessly. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power.
This research employs the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to... more This research employs the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to convey how The Late Show with Stephen Colbert employs humor and satire with the aim of providing information, proffering injunctive norms, and modifying attitudes and subjective norms in its public audience, while exposing the inefficacy of behavioral controls and urging public authorities to adopt effective ones instead. In the earlier stages of the pandemic in the US, the Show primarily appealed to people to change their behavior through providing information, invoking injunctive norms and affiliations, foregrounding appropriate attitudes and subjective norms; at the same time, its repertoire included social and political satire drawing on organizational and institutional mechanisms of behavioral control. As the health crisis became increasingly politicized, the Show redirected its satire to policies and political figures and sought to change the behavior of policymakers in setting pr...
Devil’s Weblog: Satirising Religion in a Totalitarian Theocracy Book review. Pakzad, Sorush. (201... more Devil’s Weblog: Satirising Religion in a Totalitarian Theocracy Book review. Pakzad, Sorush. (2012). Craposyncrasies. H&S Media.
In his article, “An Ecocritical Reading of Saʿdī’s ‘The Mocaddamah; or, Introduction to the Gulis... more In his article, “An Ecocritical Reading of Saʿdī’s ‘The Mocaddamah; or, Introduction to the Gulistan of Shaikh Sadi’” Massih Zekavat argues that some aspects of ecological conceptualizations seem to have remained unchanged in Iran since the thirteenth century. He also explores the possibility of applying one of the most recent western critical approaches to a distinguished text in the Persian literary canon and offers the novel understanding that such reading can provide. After a brief introduction to the main pertinent tenets of ecocriticism, a rhetorical reading of Saʿdī’s “Introduction” to Gulistān within the framework of ecocriticism explicates its environmental attitudes, some of which are still prevalent in the contemporary Iranian episteme. Cornucopia is a dominant notion in the “Introduction” and some of its descriptions resemble those of the pastoral tradition. Moreover, human/nature, man/woman, and culture/nature binary oppositions partly shape the logic of domination in t...
In his article "World Literatures in Secondary School Curricula in Iran" Massih Zekavat... more In his article "World Literatures in Secondary School Curricula in Iran" Massih Zekavat argues that the inclusion and teaching of works of world literature is significant at the secondary school level because it introduces students to a dialogic and polyphonic world where difference is appreciated. Further, Zekavat posits that the pedagogical use of reading world literatures would be the case in particular in countries and cultures where essentialist and homogenizing objectives and practices of culture prevail. Zekavat's argumentation is based on the recent revival of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur in the U.S. as a pedagogical tool and practice of reading and postulates that it would be applicable in particular to secondary education in Iran. Massih Zekavat, "World Literatures in Secondary School Curricula in Iran" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15.6 (2013): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol15/iss6/10> Special Issue N...
During the last three decades, the field of friendship studies has received exceptional attention... more During the last three decades, the field of friendship studies has received exceptional attention in Western academic space with no equivalent in modern Muslim cultures. Mahallati’s friendship series is trying to fill this gap. My contribution focuses on how satire and humor can be wisely employed to promote peace and friendship. After a rather short theoretical discussion on how humor and satire can contribute to friendship and peacebuilding, this chapter continues to illustrate these theoretical discussions through explicating the works of one of the most prominent Persian satirists. I try to subtly criticize the status quo in Iran and propose alternative ways of interacting with citizens and with the world through my argumentation.
Looking for the Enemy: The Eternal Internal Gender Wars of Our Sisters, 2015
The author contends that the equal status of women is an international concern that has become co... more The author contends that the equal status of women is an international concern that has become contentious for a myriad of reasons. In this essay, using four creation myths, he seeks to argue that a strategic use of essentialism can be used as activism. He further posits that the body, as a locus of power, is one of the essential traits that women can employ to achieve activism and resistance.
ذکاوت، مسیح. «درآمدی بر بومنقد.» نامه نقد. به کوشش محمود فتوحی. تهران: خانه کتاب، 1390. صص. 695-675., 2011
نظرية ادبي بومنقد بر مطالعة (بينارشتهاي) ادبيات و زيستبوم در ارتباط با يكديگر تأكيد دارد. اين... more نظرية ادبي بومنقد بر مطالعة (بينارشتهاي) ادبيات و زيستبوم در ارتباط با يكديگر تأكيد دارد. اين مقاله درآمدي است بر پيشينه، فرايند پيدايش و شكلگيري، مباني و روششناسي بومنقد. در آغاز، پس از بیان پيشينهاي كوتاه، روند و علل ظهور اين نظريه در نيمة دوم سدهی بيستم بررسي ميشود. پس از آن، تعاريف بومنقد از ديدگاه صاحبنظران مختلف بازگو میشود. در بخش دیگری از مقاله، موقعيت رويكردهاي گوناگون بر طيف بومنقد بين دو منتهای ساختگرايانه و واقعگرايانه مورد بررسي قرار میگیرد. در ادامه، به چند نمونه از روششناسيهاي بومنقد پرداخته میشود. سرانجام، بعد از اشارهاي مختصر به بومفمنيسم و عدالت زيستمحيطي، واژهنامهاي كاربردي و منابعي براي مطالعة بيشتر معرفي ميشود.
Many studies illustrate or presume humor’s and satire’s various impacts and benefits, but their p... more Many studies illustrate or presume humor’s and satire’s various impacts and benefits, but their political and ethical bearings have proved to be contentious. Traditionally, many satirists have professed that their primary objective is the correction of societal and moral ills in their immediate societies. Despite such interventionist claims, several theorists of humor deny its political consequences (Morreall 1983; Phiddian 2013; Davies, Oring and Raskin in Lewis 2008). Jessica Milner Davis’ Satire and Politics is yet another attempt to explicate the relationship between satire and politics. Our contemporary age is high time for both satire and political activism, and the unpreceded expansion of media and interactive social networks makes the book even more pertinent. This invaluable study of the rapport between satire and politics and its political and ethnical impacts must be kept up in further studies. Having read and admired Satire and Politics and integrated parts of it into my syllabi, I cannot wait to read Davis’s Judges, Judging and Humor.
This CFP for a special issue of EJHR seeks original interdisciplinary scholarly work that allows ... more This CFP for a special issue of EJHR seeks original interdisciplinary scholarly work that allows for both the repressive and irrepressible dynamics of humor by locating the actual practices and instances of political humor succeeding, falling flat, or backfiring within their relevant historical, institutional and cultural contexts. Though the campaign and election of President Trump in the US has provoked fresh reflections on political humor this CFP welcomes papers that also address modern and contemporary non-US and non-Western examples. It also welcomes the views of political humor practitioners either in the form of a reflective essay or interview.
Floods, droughts, wildfires, and food shortages: a lot of communication about the environment car... more Floods, droughts, wildfires, and food shortages: a lot of communication about the environment carries apocalyptic messages. Constant fear about climate change can cause people to become numb and oblivious, or lapse into eco-anxiety. However, humour and satire, can help keep environmental communication positive and encourage eco awareness, argues UG researcher Massih Zekavat.
Next week, I have the honor and privilege of sharing my work with the community of #cartoon and #... more Next week, I have the honor and privilege of sharing my work with the community of #cartoon and #caricature scholars. Thank you Prof. Dr. Anna Kollatz and Dr. Veruschka Wagner for the kind invitation. Please find the registration link below. Caricatures and Satire in a Global Perspective Lecture Series Cartooning in the Anthropocene: Cartoons in the Intersection of Satire and Environmental Communication Friday, January 12, 2024, 5:00 PM CET, on Zoom Please register for online participation: https://uni-bonn.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/u5Iud-CqpjkpHdINl99sVr_S9qXsGifehOAw
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Books by Massih Zekavat
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression, including The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons, are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Papers by Massih Zekavat
Key Words:humor; satire; the United States of America; Iran; adaptive function; coping; COVID-19 pandemic
This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency and equality.
The data contains long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations, especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal’, containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation effortlessly. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression, including The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons, are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Besides scientific and technological endeavors, solutions to ecological crises must entail social and communicative reform to persuade citizens, corporations, organizations, and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies. This monograph reassesses environmental behavior and messaging and explores the promises of humorous and satiric communication therein. It draws upon a solid and interdisciplinary theoretical foundation to explicate the individual, social, and ecospheric determinants of behavior. Creative works of popular culture across various modes of expression including, The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The New Yorker cartoons are examined to illustrate the strong if underappreciated relationship between humor and the environment. This is followed by a discussion of the instruments and methodological subtleties involved in measuring the impacts of humor and satire in environmental advocacy for the purpose of conducting empirical research. More broadly, the book aspires to participate in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in environmental humanities, communication science, psychology, and critical humor studies. It can further benefit environmental activists, policymakers, NGOs, and campaign organizers.
Key Words:humor; satire; the United States of America; Iran; adaptive function; coping; COVID-19 pandemic
This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency and equality.
The data contains long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations, especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal’, containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation effortlessly. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power.
واژههای کلیدی: بومنقد، ساختگرايي، واقعگرايي، طبيعت، محيط زيست.
Our contemporary age is high time for both satire and political activism, and the unpreceded expansion of media and interactive social networks makes the book even more pertinent. This invaluable study of the rapport between satire and politics and its political and ethnical impacts must be kept up in further studies. Having read and admired Satire and Politics and integrated parts of it into my syllabi, I cannot wait to read Davis’s Judges, Judging and Humor.
Caricatures and Satire in a Global Perspective Lecture Series
Cartooning in the Anthropocene: Cartoons in the Intersection of Satire and Environmental Communication
Friday, January 12, 2024, 5:00 PM CET, on Zoom
Please register for online participation:
https://uni-bonn.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/u5Iud-CqpjkpHdINl99sVr_S9qXsGifehOAw