Disciplinary Literacies Need More Joy: Shenanigans and the Aesthetics of Humor in a Playful Literary Community

ABSTRACT Disciplinary literacies have offered portraits of both professors' and youths' rich experiences with academic disciplines but have yet to center descriptions of how knowledge‐constructing communities might sustain play, joy, and humor. This study traces humorous discourse in an online literary community doing literary analysis and producing interpretive knowledge of the novel Dracula . Drawing on theories of the aesthetics of humor in social life, researchers qualitatively analyzed social media posts, likes, reblogs, and replies. Findings describe how this literary community employed playful disciplinary practices through verisimilitude shenanigans, literary form shenanigans, and recontextualization shenanigans to create humor and joy. This study expands understandings of disciplinary literacies in English language arts by seeing online literary spaces as knowledge‐creating communities and showing how these spaces can center play and joy.