Recent progress in SpongeBob SquarePants® studies

SpongeBob SquarePants first made a public appearance in 1999, but it took quite some time for the emergence of a scholarly work which directly cited the character as a primary focus for study. This one, from 2005, is a likely candidate as the first :

■ A More Porous Postmodernity: Absurdity, Politics, Consumerism and the Cultural Authority of Spongebob Squarepants

Since then, SpongeBob SquarePants has definitely not been ignored by academia. Here’s a (partial) list of example contributions (in no particular order).

■ Consumption, Health, and Disposability in SpongeBob SquarePants

■ Absurdism in Spongebob Squarepants episode club Spongebob

■ SpongeBob SquarePants: pop culture tsunami or more?

■ An Analysis of Expressive Utterances Produced by the Characters in the Movie Entitiled [sic] Spongebob Squarepants ( A Pragmatic Study)

■ Of Theory and Praxis: SpongeBob SquarePants and Contemporary Constructions of the American Dream

■ Constructing gender and relationships in “SpongeBob SquarePants”: Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

■ Analysis of Deixis in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: a pragmatic approach

■ Social Mores and SpongeBob Squarepants

■ Popular culture and management: the provocation of pongeBob [sic[ SquarePants

BONUS : The ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 2008, on the case of “The Krusty Krab” (an underwater restaurant in the SpongeBob SquarePants series).

^{Research research by Martin Gardiner}