Christopher J Gilbert
Biographic Data
| ID | 179706 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher J Gilbert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher J |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilbert |
| SIGNATURE | GILBERT C J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Assumption College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Caught in the Crosshairs
Here we go again.This is precisely what I thought as I cracked the spine of Caught in the Crosshairs: Feminist Comedians and the Culture Wars. Not because I anticipated some rehash of a liberatory mystique or an all-politics-is-personal return of the oppressed. Far from it. Nor did I expect a straightforward account of the seemingly popular awareness that prominent women are too often objects of public shaming crusades. Rather, I thought here we …
Dear God, Let Us Praise Mark Twain’s Satanic Sense of Humor
The eleven letters that make up Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, which Satan composes and delivers to the archangels Gabriel and Michael, are nothing if not celebrations of possible joy in the face of assured sorrow. At the time Twain was writing this book, he was grappling with disease, death, and despondency, all of which inspired a “satanic” sense of humor that resonated with his unfinished manuscript The Mysterious Stranger. Twain used th…
Introduction
Perhaps the Gilded Age codified the idea that the business of the United States is not democracy, never mind a strong defense of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. In fact, as Calvin Coolidge put it to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925, the business of the US is, well, business.1 Or, to be fair, it is the business of “the people”—a populace concerned with production, consumption, investment, and prosperity, which is to sa…
A Comedy of Pretzels
There is an old joke about the wisdom of crowds. A group of people united for a cause. More people joined, and then more, and more. They were in it together, all of a kind, all standing up to be herd.A phrase like “people’s humor” calls up notions that common sense is unequivocally a good thing, that there is something like a shared sense of what is funny (and not), and that laughter is universal among humans. Indeed, that our condition is fundam…
Caricature and the Colonization Machine
To see comicality in the reach of imperialism is to see the rhetorical force of empire itself in collective imaginations. This article approaches matters of empire through the lens of caricature. More specifically, it frames caricature as a rhetorical counterforce to images and ideas of imperialism. Comics publication the Nib put out an “Empire” issue in 2019. In an effort to figure out how a comic stretch of the imagination represents empire acr…
The diapered Donald
The Trump-as-Infant trope is legion. This essay engages how infantilization constitutes comic diminution by dampening the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and blunting its rhetorical force via mockery and contempt. It does so by recasting an understanding of the rhetorical presidency through the lens of Trump’s cartoon presidentialism. This essay conceptualizes reductio ad bairn, or the comic reduction to the infantile, as a particularly…
Caricature and National Character
Pissing in political cisterns, or laughing into the pot of “The Flight 93 Election”
Laughter can provoke both cultural catharsis and sociopolitical critique. However, in an era of Trumpism, laughter has become troubled by vulgar rhetoric of shrugging off comic possibilities insofar as the act of “laughing-at” has overtaken US media culture. This essay argues that political laughter in the shadow of President Donald J. Trump is at risk of being enervated by an overwhelming sense of humorless ridicule. Nowhere is this more apparen…
Bawdy Blows
It is a practical truism that hypermasculine rules of engagement pervade U.S. military culture. Veteran Television (VET Tv), the self-proclaimed “Comedy Central of the military,” amplifies it to the ribald. This article takes up the online network’s contention that bloodthirstiness, indecency, cocksureness, and libidinous impudence characterize the new normal of the post-9/11 male soldier. By examining its comic framework for aligning bawdry with…
War Comics
Book Review| June 01 2018 War Comics Comics and Conflict: Patriotism and Propaganda from WWII through Operation Iraqi Freedom. By Cord A. Scott. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014; pp. 224. $49.95 cloth.The Comic Art of War: A Critical Study of Military Cartoons, 1805–2014, with a Guide to Artists. By Christina M. Knopf. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015; pp. 252. $39.95 paper.Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. By …
Comic Democracies
Humor me, dear creature, as I rethink democracy in terms of its fleshly-laughable conceits ... .As much could be the opening salvo of Angus Fletcher’s take on “comic demokratia.” His book is timely
If This Statue Could Talk
In Renaissance Rome, Pasquino was the name of a curmudgeon who earned a reputation among the popolo for circulating satirical barbs about the colloquy and conduct of politico-religious officials. Commemorated and conserved in a statue that remains his namesake, Pasquino became a figure for the civic ritual of bodying forth unease with and distaste for corrupt Italian politics. Pasquinades, or anonymous squibs posted on and around the statue, repr…
Bringing War Down to Earth
Post-traumatic stress disorder among returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has invoked all manner of public responses, not least of which is a sense of pity that begins and ends with the moment of recognition. As such, the publicity of soldier sufferance ironically mitigates the need for a more complex socialization to the pain of war that might be animated by a more nuanced emotional response rooted in the disruption of common…
The Court of Comedy
At a certain point in Acharnians (425 bce), Dicaepolis proclaims to the chorus that comedy can occasionally clarify what is right and good. Tellingly, Aristophanes's protagonist adopts numerous rol
Standing Up to Combat Trauma
The trauma of combat is as much about the pain of war as it is about the painful return of soldiers to civic life. Of particular concern is the contemporary normalization of wounded warriors as ordinary occurrences in modern warfare. This essay engages the stand-up comedy of Bobby Henline, a severely injured veteran, in order to examine combat trauma as a problem not only of soldiers in arms, but also of a broader war culture. Henline is signific…
Toward a rhetoric of insult - by Thomas Conley
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Toward a rhetoric of insult Conley Thomas University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2010, $17.00 (soft), vii + 129 pp. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert 1Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 63, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages E19–E24, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12014 Published: 24 January 2013
Satire and Dissent
Book Review| June 01 2012 Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Amber Day. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 378–381. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940580 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site…
Toward a Comedic Commons
Common As Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership Lewis Hyde New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-374-22313-7, $26.00 hbk The concept of ‘the commons,’ or the sense that art an
Satire and Dissent
Book Review| June 01 2012 Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Amber Day. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 378–381. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940580 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site…
If This Statue Could Talk
In Renaissance Rome, Pasquino was the name of a curmudgeon who earned a reputation among the popolo for circulating satirical barbs about the colloquy and conduct of politico-religious officials. Commemorated and conserved in a statue that remains his namesake, Pasquino became a figure for the civic ritual of bodying forth unease with and distaste for corrupt Italian politics. Pasquinades, or anonymous squibs posted on and around the statue, repr…
Toward a Comedic Commons
Common As Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership Lewis Hyde New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-374-22313-7, $26.00 hbk The concept of ‘the commons,’ or the sense that art an
Satire and Dissent
Book Review| June 01 2012 Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Amber Day. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (2): 378–381. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940580 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site…
Toward a rhetoric of insult - by Thomas Conley
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Toward a rhetoric of insult Conley Thomas University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2010, $17.00 (soft), vii + 129 pp. Christopher J. Gilbert Christopher J. Gilbert 1Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 63, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages E19–E24, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12014 Published: 24 January 2013
Standing Up to Combat Trauma
The trauma of combat is as much about the pain of war as it is about the painful return of soldiers to civic life. Of particular concern is the contemporary normalization of wounded warriors as ordinary occurrences in modern warfare. This essay engages the stand-up comedy of Bobby Henline, a severely injured veteran, in order to examine combat trauma as a problem not only of soldiers in arms, but also of a broader war culture. Henline is signific…
If This Statue Could Talk
In Renaissance Rome, Pasquino was the name of a curmudgeon who earned a reputation among the popolo for circulating satirical barbs about the colloquy and conduct of politico-religious officials. Commemorated and conserved in a statue that remains his namesake, Pasquino became a figure for the civic ritual of bodying forth unease with and distaste for corrupt Italian politics. Pasquinades, or anonymous squibs posted on and around the statue, repr…
Bringing War Down to Earth
Post-traumatic stress disorder among returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has invoked all manner of public responses, not least of which is a sense of pity that begins and ends with the moment of recognition. As such, the publicity of soldier sufferance ironically mitigates the need for a more complex socialization to the pain of war that might be animated by a more nuanced emotional response rooted in the disruption of common…
The Court of Comedy
At a certain point in Acharnians (425 bce), Dicaepolis proclaims to the chorus that comedy can occasionally clarify what is right and good. Tellingly, Aristophanes's protagonist adopts numerous rol
War Comics
Book Review| June 01 2018 War Comics Comics and Conflict: Patriotism and Propaganda from WWII through Operation Iraqi Freedom. By Cord A. Scott. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014; pp. 224. $49.95 cloth.The Comic Art of War: A Critical Study of Military Cartoons, 1805–2014, with a Guide to Artists. By Christina M. Knopf. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015; pp. 252. $39.95 paper.Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. By …
Comic Democracies
Humor me, dear creature, as I rethink democracy in terms of its fleshly-laughable conceits ... .As much could be the opening salvo of Angus Fletcher’s take on “comic demokratia.” His book is timely
Bawdy Blows
It is a practical truism that hypermasculine rules of engagement pervade U.S. military culture. Veteran Television (VET Tv), the self-proclaimed “Comedy Central of the military,” amplifies it to the ribald. This article takes up the online network’s contention that bloodthirstiness, indecency, cocksureness, and libidinous impudence characterize the new normal of the post-9/11 male soldier. By examining its comic framework for aligning bawdry with…
Pissing in political cisterns, or laughing into the pot of “The Flight 93 Election”
Laughter can provoke both cultural catharsis and sociopolitical critique. However, in an era of Trumpism, laughter has become troubled by vulgar rhetoric of shrugging off comic possibilities insofar as the act of “laughing-at” has overtaken US media culture. This essay argues that political laughter in the shadow of President Donald J. Trump is at risk of being enervated by an overwhelming sense of humorless ridicule. Nowhere is this more apparen…
Caricature and the Colonization Machine
To see comicality in the reach of imperialism is to see the rhetorical force of empire itself in collective imaginations. This article approaches matters of empire through the lens of caricature. More specifically, it frames caricature as a rhetorical counterforce to images and ideas of imperialism. Comics publication the Nib put out an “Empire” issue in 2019. In an effort to figure out how a comic stretch of the imagination represents empire acr…
The diapered Donald
The Trump-as-Infant trope is legion. This essay engages how infantilization constitutes comic diminution by dampening the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and blunting its rhetorical force via mockery and contempt. It does so by recasting an understanding of the rhetorical presidency through the lens of Trump’s cartoon presidentialism. This essay conceptualizes reductio ad bairn, or the comic reduction to the infantile, as a particularly…
Caricature and National Character
A Comedy of Pretzels
There is an old joke about the wisdom of crowds. A group of people united for a cause. More people joined, and then more, and more. They were in it together, all of a kind, all standing up to be herd.A phrase like “people’s humor” calls up notions that common sense is unequivocally a good thing, that there is something like a shared sense of what is funny (and not), and that laughter is universal among humans. Indeed, that our condition is fundam…
Dear God, Let Us Praise Mark Twain’s Satanic Sense of Humor
The eleven letters that make up Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, which Satan composes and delivers to the archangels Gabriel and Michael, are nothing if not celebrations of possible joy in the face of assured sorrow. At the time Twain was writing this book, he was grappling with disease, death, and despondency, all of which inspired a “satanic” sense of humor that resonated with his unfinished manuscript The Mysterious Stranger. Twain used th…
Introduction
Perhaps the Gilded Age codified the idea that the business of the United States is not democracy, never mind a strong defense of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. In fact, as Calvin Coolidge put it to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925, the business of the US is, well, business.1 Or, to be fair, it is the business of “the people”—a populace concerned with production, consumption, investment, and prosperity, which is to sa…
Caught in the Crosshairs
Here we go again.This is precisely what I thought as I cracked the spine of Caught in the Crosshairs: Feminist Comedians and the Culture Wars. Not because I anticipated some rehash of a liberatory mystique or an all-politics-is-personal return of the oppressed. Far from it. Nor did I expect a straightforward account of the seemingly popular awareness that prominent women are too often objects of public shaming crusades. Rather, I thought here we …
Art (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Literature (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)