'Meta-‐Disparagement' Humor and Its Impact on Prejudice By
Irony of ironies?: ‘Meta-disparagement’ humor and its impact on prejudice by Caitlin Joline Brown A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication) in The University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Susan Douglas, Co-Chair Professor Nicholas Valentino, Co-Chair Associate Professor Ted Brader Associate Professor Nojin Kwak © Caitlin Joline Brown 2012 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee for their invaluable support and guidance. I am deeply grateful to Nick Valentino, Susan Douglas, Ted Brader, and Nojin Kwak for developing my skills as a researchers and teacher in and out of the classroom. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of my research partner Diana Betz, who helped me refine this concept and develop the experiments included in this dissertation. My research assistants Justine Lamanna, Max Levenstein, Kaitlyn McGovern, Girish Menon, Elizabeth Ross, and Alana Zacharias, as well as Diana Betz’s research assistants, were instrumental to this work as well. I am indebted to the following funding resources that allowed me to develop as scholar and complete this work: the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, the Howard R. Marsh Fellowship, the Helen H. Weber Fellowship, the Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant, the Jay H. Payne Research Fellowship, the University of Michigan College of Language, Science, and Arts Fellowship, several Rackham Conference Travel Grants, Jay H. Payne Conference Travel Grants, and Department of Communications Graduate Travel Scholarships, and the International Institute Conference Travel Grant. ii Finally, I am so grateful for my dear friend-colleagues: Jimmy Draper, Ashley Reid Brown, Leslee McKnight, Vanessa Cruz, Brooke Duffy, Seyram Avle, SooYoung Bae, Hope Cummings, Sarah Erickson, Lauren Guggenheim, Julia Lippman, Yioryos Nardis, Edward Timke, Will Youmans, and Rebecca Yu.
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