This Special Collection delves into how stereotypes are visually represented across digital, non-digital, and pre-digital cultures, focusing on their societal impact. Drawing on the methodologies of Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky, the analysis emphasizes how stereotypes function as a 'mirror in a mirror', reflecting and reshaping cultural narratives. Visual imagery, particularly humorous depictions of national and ethnic stereotypes, challenges conventional views by transcending moral and social constraints. Effective humour must resonate with diverse audiences by being both relatable and understandable.
The Internet has reshaped humour by democratizing its creation, blurring professional boundaries, and broadening social norms. Online content has fragmented audiences, pushing creators to innovate and adapt to niche communities. The rise of visual culture has redefined testimony and information sharing, with digital images and memes influencing public opinion and shaping political discourse. Memetic communication and 'Imagefare' are critical tools for understanding these dynamics.
Authors are encouraged to explore stereotypes in visual humour, such as cartoons and memes, using interdisciplinary approaches. These studies reveal how humour can serve political agendas or diminish stereotypes' societal impact by exposing their influence. This issue appeals to humour specialists and social sciences, art, and humanities scholars, fostering interdisciplinary insights into visual and cultural studies.

Image: Kondas, Paul. Ü.R! (1960). Oil on canvas, 118 × 80 cm. Reproduced by kind permission of the owner, Viljandi Museum, and the Kondas Centre.
Editors: Guillem Castañar-Rubio (Guest Editor), Orest Semotiuk (Guest Editor), Sergey Troitskiy (Guest Editor)
Visual Rhetorics of Humour: The Formation and Dissemination of Stereotypes through Cartoons and Memes
Special Collections
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                Beyond Text: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Textuality 
            
        
            
                Visual Rhetorics of Humour:  The Formation and Dissemination of Stereotypes through Cartoons and Memes 
            
        
            
                Diversity and Competition within the Latin Church: The Secular-Mendicant Controversy and its Long Aftermath (13th–20th Centuries) 
            
        
            
                Thinking the Political: Theory, Literature, Practice 
            
        
            
                Poetry Off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance 
            
        
            
                Humour as a Human Right 
            
        
            
                Cultural Heritage Data for Research: Opening Museum Collections, Project Data and Digital Images for Research, Query and Discovery 
            
        
            
                Literature as Imaginary Archive: Ephemera and Modern Literary Production 
            
        
            
                Caliban's Mirror: Reflections of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde 
            
        
            
                Cultural Representations of Machine Vision 
            
        
            
                The Public Curatorship of the Medieval Past 
            
        
            
                Medieval Minds and Matter 
            
        
            
                Representing the Medieval in Popular Culture: Remembering the Angevins 
            
        
            
                The Politics and History of Menstruation: Contextualising the Scottish Campaign to End Period Poverty 
            
        
            
                Production Archives 03: Archival Practices 
            
        
            
                Production Archives 02: Production Contexts 
            
        
            
                Production Archives 01: Puppets for Action 
            
        
            
                Representing Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century 
            
        
            
                The Pathological Body: European Literary and Cultural Perspectives in the Age of Modern Medicine 
            
        
            
                Binary Modernisms: Re/Appropriations of Modernist Art in the Digital Age 
            
        
            
                Local and Universal in Irish Literature and Culture 
            
        
            
                Reading in Ruins: Exploring Posthumanist Narrative Studies 
            
        
            
                The Language of Perspective 
            
        
            
                Nancy Astor, Public Women and Gendered Political Culture in Interwar Britain 
            
        
            
                The Working-Class Avant-Garde 
            
        
            
                Colonialities in Dispute: Discourses on Colonialism and Race in the Spanish State 
            
        
            
                Powering the Future: Energy Resources in Science Fiction and Fantasy 
            
        
            
                Writers and Intellectuals on Britain and Europe, 1918–2018 
            
        
            
                Literature, Law and Psychoanalysis 
            
        
            
                Muslims in the Media 
            
        
            
                Encounters between Asian and Western Art in the 20th and 21st centuries: a liberating influence for Asia? 
            
        
            
                Waste: Disposability, Decay, and Depletion 
            
        
            
                Pride Revisited: Cinema, Activism and Re-Activation 
            
        
            
                New Approaches to Late Medieval Court Records 
            
        
            
                Utopian Art and Literature from Modern India 
            
        
            
                Right-Wing Populism and Mediated Activism: Creative Responses and Counter-Narratives 
            
        
            
                Representing Climate: Local to Global 
            
        
            
                Cultivating Spheres: Agriculture, Technical Communication, and the Publics 
            
        
            
                Freedom After Neoliberalism 
            
        
            
                The Medieval Brain 
            
        
            
                Remaking Collections 
            
        
            
                New Approaches to Medieval Water Studies 
            
        
            
                Imaginaries of the Future 01: Bodies and Media 
            
        
            
                Imaginaries of the Future 02: Politics, Poetics, Place 
            
        
            
                Imaginaries of the Future 03: Utopia at the Border 
            
        
            
                Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies 
            
        
            
                Station Eleven and Twenty-First-Century Writing 
            
        
            
                #Agreement20 
            
        
            
                What’s Left? Marxism, Literature and Culture in the 21st Century 
            
        
            
                New Voices in Jewish-American Literature 
            
        
            
                Authors, Narratives, and Audiences in Medieval Saints’ Lives 
            
        
            
                From TV To Film 
            
        
            
                American Literature & the Transnational Marketplace 
            
        
            
                Mnemosyne 
            
        
            
                Healing Gods, Heroes and Rituals in the Graeco-Roman World 
            
        
            
                The Abolition of the University 
            
        
    
