Georgetown University

Washington, D.C. -- Adam Lifshey, assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University, will present his paper “America (The Conference Paper): The Onion Unpeeled, The Daily Show Untimed” at the Modern Language Association annual convention held this year in San Francisco.

In his paper, Lifshey analyzes how the leading satirical media of today challenge the dominant popular narratives of U.S. history and resulting senses of national identity.

“The leading sources of satirical news in the United States, “The Onion” and “The Daily Show,” have proven so incisive in cutting through the discursive presumptions of mainstream media that for many people they have become the most reliable representation of current events,” says Lifshey. “The comedic journalism, in other words, has achieved a greater reputation for accuracy in the minds of its audience than those media who actually do claim truthfulness as the basis for their ‘news.’”

Lifshey explores what happens when satirical media go beyond reporting the news of the day or week and report on historical U.S. moments. Examining reports of 20th-century U.S. history in “The Onion’s” “Our Dumb Century,” and in “America (The Book)” by “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart, Lifshey considers how the satirical portrayal of the past can force a reframing of mainstream historical narratives of the United States.

In an example, Lifshey recounts how “Our Dumb Century” frames Pearl Harbor not as a tragic moment when a peaceful and innocent United States was immorally attacked by a foreign empire, but as the opening battle between two different empires who were both determined to colonize the Pacific.

“The banner headline for December 7, 1941, reads ‘Dastardly Japs Attack Colonially Occupied U.S. Non-State,’” says Lifshey. The article “quotes” FDR as declaring, ‘We conquered the Hawaiians first’ and discusses the unfairness of Japanese attacks in “areas rightfully considered U.S. brown-people holdings.”

“Such deadpan humor bears no resemblance to virtually all other popular media treatments of Pearl Harbor as a defining day of the nation and yet is acutely accurate,” says Lifshey.

Professor Lifshey is interested in Latin American literature of all time periods, places and genres. His research is mostly comparative in nature as he works within hemispheric, transatlantic, transpacific and global contexts. He specializes in Asian and African literature written in Spanish, principally in the fiction of the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea. He also works on folk music by such singer-songwriters as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Mark Knopfler.

About the Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association, the largest and one of the oldest American learned societies in the humanities (est. 1883), promotes the advancement of literary and linguistic studies. The 30,000 members of the association come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as from Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. PMLA, the association’s journal of literary scholarship, has published distinguished scholarly articles for more than 100 years. Approximately 9,500 members of the MLA and its allied and affiliate organizations attend the association’s annual convention each December. The MLA is a constituent of the American Council of Learned Societies and the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures.

About Georgetown University

Georgetown University is the oldest and largest Catholic and Jesuit university in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in Washington, DC, Doha, Qatar and around the world. For more information about Georgetown University, visit www.georgetown.edu.