Viveca Greene
Associate Professor of Media Studies
Viveca Greene, associate professor of media studies, earned a Ph.D. from the communication department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as the university's highest teaching honor: The Distinguished Teaching Award. She holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Professor Greene is co-editor (with Ted Gournelos) of A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America (University Press of Mississippi, 2011). Her work has appeared in Social Semiotics, In Media Res, The Nation, and We the Media: A Citizen's Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy. Slated for publication in 2019 are her articles on toxic uses of irony and social media (Studies in American Humor) and on feminist satire and rape culture (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society), and an essay on racist trolling and critical humor studies (The Joke Is on Us: Political Comedy in Late Neoliberal Times).
She teaches courses on satire, audience research, and critical media studies.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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Stand up, satirical news, and memes: How do these and other humor-related cultural forms allow both right-wing extremists and the members of the many groups those extremists target (immigrants, racial/ethnic/religious minorities, queer people, women, etc.) to challenge the status quo? What is the power and are the limitations of these cultural forms? In this discussion-based and writing-intensive course, students will grapple with humor's many social and political functions, and in relation to white supremacy, rape culture, and other weighty issues. Course readings will include literature by scholars in communication, media studies, sociology, psychology, political science, and ethnic studies, which we will draw from in analyzing specific performances and platforms. Ultimately students will produce a final research project on a humor-related topic of their own choosing, and present it to the class.
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Stand up, satirical news, and memes: How do these and other humor-related cultural forms allow both right-wing extremists and the members of the groups those extremists target (immigrants, racial/ethnic/religious minorities, queer people, women, etc.) to challenge social and political norms? What are the limitations and power of these cultural forms? In this discussion-based and writing-intensive course, students will grapple with humor's social and political functions, and in relation to white supremacy, rape culture, and other weighty issues. Also, we will address humor in light of our Learning Collaborative's question ("How do we decide what constitutes truth in a 'post-truth' era?"). Course readings will span work in communication, media studies, sociology, psychology, political science, and ethnic studies, which we will draw from in analyzing specific performances and platforms. In addition to shorter written assignments, students will produce a final research project on a humor-related topic and present it to the class. [Note: students may not be registered in LCSEM-0127 and HACU 229]
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As one recent US President noted, the new media ecosystem "means everything is true and nothing is true." Banned from all top social media platforms, including Twitter, the President's predecessor launched Truth Social as the flagship application of his social media platform, which Vanity Fair characterizes as "a cringeworthy joke." Working within the interdisciplinary field of media studies, in this course we will take a case-study approach to exploring contemporary issues related to the post-truth world order: disinformation, fake news, deepfakes, crisis actor claims, conspiracy theories, and the like. In so doing, we will be attentive to creative and satirical responses to such challenges, as well as consider the need for public institutions to intervene. Students will write weekly responses to assigned texts, conduct independent research, produce a final paper on a topic of their own choosing, and participate in an end-of-semester mini-conference. Keywords: disinformation, misinformation, meme magic, 4chan, activism.