Christopher Gilbert, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English

508-767-7425 Founders Hall - Room 203
Download CV (PDF)

Office Hours

Tuesday 10:30 – noon

Wednesday, noon – 2:30

Thursday, 10:30 – noon

Education

  • Ph.D Rhetoric and Public Culture (with minor in Cultural Studies), Department of Communication and Culture, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 2015
  • Advance Pedagogy Teaching Certificate, Department of Communication and Culture, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
  • M.A. Rhetoric (with minor in Film and Media Studies), Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 2011
  • B.A. Communication and Marketing Double Major, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 2005

Research Interests

  • Political humor/comedy and the politics of comic portrayals
  • Cultural identity in public communication
  • War culture and representations of combat trauma

Publications

  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “The Diapered Donald: Comic Infantilizations of a U.S. American President,” accepted at Quarterly Journal of Speech. Forthcoming, 2021. 
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Caricature and the Colonization Machine: The Nib’s Empire Issue as a Comic Stretch of the Imagination,” accepted at Studies in American Humor. Forthcoming, 2021. 
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Scorched Earth Stand-Up: Laughing Off Wounded Warriors With the Humor of Bobby Henline,” in Taking a Stand: American Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals, ed. Jared Champion and Pete Kunze (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press). Forthcoming, 2021.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Folly in the Fourth Estate: Editorial Cartoons and Conflicting Values in Global Media Culture,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.983. 
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “MAD With Alfred E. Neuman, or It’s the Covers, Stupid,” in Seeing Mad: Essays on Mad Magazine’s Humor and Legacy from Cover to Fold-In, ed. Judith Yaross Lee and John Bird (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2020), 147-76.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Argumentum ad Carricare as a Mode of Character Attack: Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live,” in The Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, ed. Sergei A. Samoilenko (New York: Routledge, 2020), 209-224.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Pissing in Political Cisterns, or Laughing Into the Pot of ‘The Flight 93 Election’,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17 (2020): 19-37.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Bawdy Blows: VET Tv and the Comedy of Combat Masculinity,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42 (2019): 181-201.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Of Satire and Gordian Knots,” Studies in American Humor 5.1 (2019): 124-156.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Decolonizing Caricature: Prosopographia in the Comic Politics of Marty Two Bulls, Sr.,” in Decolonizing Public Address: American Indian Rhetoric and the Struggle for Self-Determination, ed. Casey Ryan Kelly and Jason Edward Black (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 127-151.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “War Comics,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 21.2 (2018): 343-357.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Impure Imaginations: The Rhetorical Humors of Digital Virology,” in Ancient Rhetorics + Digital Networks (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), ed. Damien Smith Pfister and Michele Kennerly (2018), 107–131.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert and John Louis Lucaites, “Returning Soldiers and the In/visibility of Combat Trauma,” in In/Visible War: The Culture of War in Twenty-First-Century America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), ed., Jon Simons and John L. Lucaites (2017), 48–68. Lead Writer.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Obama the Grotesque: A Parade of Racial Horribles,” Rhetoric Review 36.4 (2017): 311 –320.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “If Laughs Could Kill: Eddie Izzard and the Queer Art of Comedy,” in Standing Up, Speaking Up: Stand-Up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change, ed. Matthew R. Meier and Casey R. Schmitt (New York: Routledge, 2017), 20–39.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “The Press of War Imagery,” in Rhetoric Society Quarterly 47.2 (2017): 206–214.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement: On Truth and Lies in an Affective Sense,” in Truth in the Public Sphere, ed. Jason Hannan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 93–114.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert and John Louis Lucaites, “Bringing War Down to Earth: Bathos and the Dialectic of Pity and Compassion in Doonesbury’s View of Combat Trauma,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101 (2015): 379–404. Lead Writer.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “If This Statue Could Talk: Statuary Satire in the Pasquinade Tradition,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18.1 (2015): 79–112.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Return of the Ridiculous, or Caricature as Political Cliché,” Communication, Culture & Critique 7.3 (2014): 390–95.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “MAD About Stupidity, or Judging by Covers with Alfred E. Neuman,” Studies in American Humor 30 (2014): 57–76.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “The Ridiculous in Rhetorical Judgment,” The Review of Communication 14.3–4 (2014): 270–287.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Standing Up to Combat Trauma,” Text and Performance Quarterly 34.2 (2014): 144–63.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Playing With Hitler: Downfall and Its Ludic Uptake,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 30.5 (2013): 407–24.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “Toward the Satyric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 46.3 (2013): 280–305.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert and Jonathan P. Rossing, “Trumping Tropes with Joke(r)s: The Daily Show ‘Plays the Race Card’,” Western Journal of Communication 77.1 (2013): 92–111. Lead Writer.
  • Christopher J. Gilbert, “In Dubiis Libertas: A Diogenic Attitude for a Politics of Distrust,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 42.1 (2012): 1–25. Lead Essay.

Professional Affiliations & Memberships

  • American Humor Studies Association
  • National Communication Association
  • Rhetoric Society of America

Awards

  • Robert M. O’Neil Top Division Paper Award, Freedom of Expression Division, National Communication Association Convention, 2020.
  • Top Paper Award, Eastern States Communication Association Convention, Interpretation and Performance Studies Division, Boston, MA, March/April 2017.
  • Top Paper Award, National Communication Association Convention, Rhetorical Theory Division, Chicago, IL, November 2014.
  • Top Paper Award, National Communication Association Convention, Washington, DC, November 2013.
  • Teaching Award for C209 (professor nominated), Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, 2013.
  • Top Paper Honorable Mention, Southern States Communication Association Convention, Louisville, KY, April 2013.
  • Lambda Pi Eta Graduate Student Instructor Award (student nominated). Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, 2012.
  • Best Associate Instructor Award (professor nominated). Indiana University Bloomington, 2012.
  • Virginia Gunderson Top Paper Award. Department of Communication and Culture. Indiana University Bloomington, 2012.
  • Top Paper Honorable Mention for Rhetoric Division, Eastern States Communication Association Convention, Cambridge, MA, March 2012.
  • Robert G. Gunderson Top Paper Award. Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, 2011.
  • Top Paper Award for Philosophy of Communication Division, Eastern Communication Association Convention, Arlington, VA, April 2011.
  • Teaching Fellow Award, Indiana University Collegium on Inquiry in Action 2010-2011, Teagle Foundation, to develop an interdisciplinary approach to reflective and evidence-based instruction.
  • Outstanding New Teacher Award (professor nominated), Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, 2010.