 Willett continues to intersect continental, pragmatist, and feminist work in Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Democracy and Freedom (2008). Willett’s ongoing interest in questions of freedom lead her to examine how it can be supported and encouraged by comedy, including social ridicule, satire, and carnivalesque laughter. As Willett ranges widely from philosophy to film and television to political tragedies, she draws on the tragicomic philosophy of Cornel West to develop an “augmented pragmatism, inflected fully by the comic spirit,” in order to “provid[e] the philosophical basis for reconceptualizing freedom” (2008, 16). Willett also puts Jean-Paul Sartre and Henri Bergson in conversation with Ralph Ellison and filmmaker Spike Lee to explore how satire can help nurture an emancipatory political ethics.  The result is a feminist-infused account of democracy and freedom that appreciates the politically transformative possibilities of comedy.