The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield

The object of much debate, attention, and scholarship since it first aired more than 20 years ago, The Simpsons provides excellent, if unexpected, fodder for high school and college lesson plans. After all, laughing students are hardly sleeping students! But The Simpsons also provides a familiar student knowledge base which instructors can use as a jumping-off point to introduce concepts in literature, composition, linguistics, cultural studies, gender studies, and media appreciation. The authors, both of whom have been teaching The Simpsons for more than a decade, share exercises, prompts, and even syllabi that have proven successful in their own courses.

Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

A former president of the Margaret Atwood Society, Karma Waltonen is a senior lecturer in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis, where she won the Academic Federation Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015.

Denise Du Vernay has been teaching courses in composition, literature, The Simpsons, speech, and the humanities for more than ten years. She is a regular contributor to Matchflick.com and is currently working on her first novel. She lives near Chicago.