Creative Nonfiction Workshop with an Emphasis on Humor

Course Description

In this course we'll explore aspects of American humor/Literature as a tool for social change and we'll try our hand at the writing of it. Humor is a difficult subject to quantify because of its subjective nature; what's funny to me might be insulting to you; the very essence of transgressive and transformative humor is to unsettle the status quo. Essentially it is subversive. I've chosen broadly, from literary texts that use humor, black or otherwise, often to disguise a more direct protest. We'll observe how humor advances political positions because of its disruptive nature. Questions to consider: Is it always a tool of the disenfranchised or the marginalized? Is political humor the opposite of propaganda? Is there status quo political humor?