Funniest Pages

David Swick is Associate Director of Journalism at the University of King’s College, Canada. He was a journalist for more than 20 years before moving into teaching. His work includes CBC Radio documentaries, TV documentaries, nearly 2,000 newspaper columns, and one nonfiction book. Richard Lance Keeble is the winner of the National Teaching Fellowship 2011 – the highest award for teachers in higher education in the UK – and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Journalism Education, 2014. He has written and edited 35 books and is Chair of the Orwell Society.

• Contents: David Swick/Richard Lance Keeble: Journalism - So Often Funnier than Fiction – Nicholas Brownlees: News Mockery in the English Civil War and Interregnum Press – Dean Jobb: «Written with Powers Truly Comick»: Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and the Birth of Social and Political Satire – Ben Stubbs: Travel Writing and Humor: From Dickens and Twain to the Present Day – Mary M. Cronin: Sifting Comic Wheat from Western Chaff: Alex E. Sweet, John Armoy Knox, and the Humorof the American West – Mark J. Noonan: Howling Mad: Mad Magazine, Allen Ginsberg, and the Culture Wars of the 1950s – David Swick: Comedy in Tragedy: Humor in the Literary Journalism of James Cameron – Hendrik Michael: Words! Wisdom! Gibberish!: Verbal Irony in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 – Antonio Castillo: The Clinic: Satirizing and Interrogating Power in post-Pinochet Chile – Carolyn Rickett: Deadly Funny: How John Diamond Used Humor to Tackle the Taboo Subjects of Cancer and Dying – James Waller-Davies: «Common sense dancing»: Clive James’s Invention of the Television Column as a Comic Genre – Matthew Ricketson: John Clarke and the Power of Satire in Journalism – Rob Steen: A Sporting Chance: Fun and Failure - Both On and Off the Field – Dermot Heaney: Bowling Them Over and Over with Wit: Forms and Functions of Humor in Live Text Cricket Coverage – Sue Joseph: Harmer, Humor and The Hoopla: In the Vanguard of Australian Female Comedy – Asif Hameed: Speaking Truth to Power in 140 Characters or Less: Political Satire, Civic Engagement and Journalism – Blake Lambert: Twitter and the Revitalization of Black Humor in Journalism – Kevin M. Lerner: How Spy, the Iconic Satirical Magazine of the 1980s, Invented Contemporary Snark, and How Internet Journalism Has Misappropriated It – Richard Lance Keeble and David Swick: Putting Fun into the Curriculum.

"David Swick and Richard Lance Keeble have produced the definitive scholarly anthology on the varied uses of humor in the journalist's arsenal. Starting in the mid-17th century and ending with an essay on Twitter, they have enlisted 17 superb scholars from seven countries to examine the sociocultural roles of wit/comedy/mirth/hilarity/satire/absurdity/whatever in journalism. Though certainly a pleasure to read, rest assured: it is no joking matter." (David Abrahamson, Professor of Journalism and Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, The Medill School, Northwestern University) "In their zeal to seriously joke around, editors David Swick and Richard Lance Keeble and their contributors have ensured that The Funniest Pages starts fast and doesn't let up in telling an alternate history of literary journalism through the richly rewarding lens of humor. The result is an entertaining, effective and convincing parallel universe that showcases the many virtues of employing satire as a weapon to laugh all the way from birth to grave." (Bill Reynolds, Editor, Literary Journalism Studies) "Any book in which a writer asks 'What's funny about men?' is worth buying. This is the only academic work which has intentionally made me laugh. If you thought Mad magazine was just a 1950s comic about a boy with big ears, or that snark was wartime whale meat, you need to read this book! It goes right up to the present too, with a fearless and funny look at Twitter et al. It's really about poking fun at power, and should be essential reading for anyone who takes journalism seriously. Lol!" (Lis Howell, Professor, City University London)