Abstracts
Abstract
This paper considers memes through the lens of riddles and discusses the generative or creative aspect of the meme format as applied in the classroom. In a literary studies course on cultural narratives, ranging from canonical to bestselling fiction, we critically discussed the genre-specific potential of memes, which students were encouraged to explore both intellectually and experientially. In addition, we asked students to create memes in their assessment of the course. The results were highly ambivalent, ranging from humor to seriousness, self-critique to critique of the course, panic (regarding the final exam) to playful exaggeration of said panic. This ambivalence, often accentuated by irony and excess, challenges any definitive understanding of the memes’ content and meaning. Rather than dismissing memes as a flawed, imprecise tool, this article examines them as riddled forms and hypothesizes that, due to their ambivalence, they may actually be closer to a student’s “truth.” The connection between memes and meaning-making is especially relevant to courses that, like the one in this article, foreground semantic ambiguity and an explorative habitus.
Keywords:
- memes,
- riddles,
- form,
- genre,
- teaching
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Bibliography
- Berk, Ronald A. “Survey of 12 Strategies to Measure Teaching Effectiveness.” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, vol. 17, no. 1, 2005, pp. 48-62.
- Biebuyck, Benjamin and Gunther Martens. “Literary Metaphor between Cognition and Narration: The Sandmann revisited.” Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor, edited by Monika Fludernik. Routledge, 2011, pp. 58–76.
- Boring, Anne. “Gender biases in student evaluations of teaching.” Journal of Public Economics, vol. 145, 2017, pp. 27-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.11.006
- Cohen, Ted. “Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, Autumn 1978, pp. 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1086/447969
- Chisadza, Carolyn, Nicky Nicholls and Eleni Yitbarek. “Race and Gender Biases in Student Evaluations of Teachers.” Economics Letters, vol. 179, 2019, pp. 66-71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2019.03.022
- Eubanks, Philip. ‘The Story of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Mappings?’ Poetics Today, vol. 20, no. 3, Fall 1999, pp. 419–42.
- Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226294179.001.0001
- Jenkins, Eric S. “The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 100, no. 4, 2014, pp. 442-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2014.989258
- Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. NYU Press, 2013.
- Johnson, Valen E. Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education. Springer-Verlag, 2003.
- Jolles, André. Einfache Formen. 4th edition, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1968.
- Merritt, Deborah J. "Bias, the Brain, and Student Evaluations of Teaching." St. John's Law Review, vol. 82, no. 1, 2008, pp. 235-88.
- Ricoeur, Paul. “Metaphor and Symbol.” Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. The Texas Christian University Press, 1976, pp. 45–69.
- Shifman, Limor. “The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol.13, no. 3, 2014, pp. 340-358. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914546577
- Tucker, Brian. Reading Riddles: Rhetorics of Obscurity from Romanticism to Freud. Lewisburg, N.Y., Bucknell University Press, 2011.
- Valdez, Paolo Nino et al. "Using Memes to Teach Critical Inquiry in the ESL Classroom." TESOL Journal, vol. 11, no. e505, 2020, pp. 1-3 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.505
- Wells, Dominic D. "You All Made Dank Memes: Using Internet Memes to Promote Critical Thinking." Journal of Political Science Education, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, pp. 240-48, .
- Wiggins, Bradley E. and G. Bret Bowers. "Memes as Genre: A Structurational Analysis of the Memescape." New Media & Society, vol. 17, no. 11, 2015, pp. 1886-906, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814535194
- Wood, James. How Fiction Works. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
- Zenner, Eline, and Dirk Geeraerts. "One Does not Simply Process Memes: Image Macros as Multimodal Constructions." Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research, edited by Esme Winter-Froemel and Verena Thaler, De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 167-194. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110586374-008