Satire

Department of Satire

The Department of Satire at Tidemarsh University was started for students within the English Department that couldn't hack it reading real literature. The department devotes itself to the scholarly examination of things that probably didn't need to be examined in the first place. Our curriculum, steeped in irony, is one where students learn the fine line between defendable humor and defamation. The program caters to aspiring humorists, disillusioned lawyers, and academics who never quite recovered from reading Kurt Vonnegut books in undergrad.

Housed in a the somewhat leaky basement of one of our many advanced weaponry research laboratories, the department prides itself on rigorous irreverence. Students may specialize in areas such as Bureaucratic Absurdity, Legal Self-Parody, and the Creation of Dubious Institutions for Personal Gain. Many go on to careers in ghostwriting bylaws for fictional governments, or founding unaccredited universities in states with minimal oversight.

Faculty includes several former litigators who, after realizing sarcasm often landed their clients in jail, found refuge outside of the courtroom. Others hail from more traditional backgrounds, such as failed novelists and retired postal workers.

Our capstone project, “Inventing an Alma Mater,” challenges students to fabricate an entire academic institution from scratch—including a founding moto, a handful of scandals, and mascot that teeters between loveaable and annoying with boarderline attributes of sexual harrassment. Bonus credit is awarded for successfuly obtaining offical recogniation by any government agency or obtaining IRS non-profit status.