Course Description

GLS 592: Laughing Matters: Contemporary American Humor

Instructor: Mike Wentworth

Regardless of the expression “laughing like a hyena,” laughter is supposedly unique to the human species. So it would seem, if only in terms of the human condition, that “laughing matters.” Come to think of it, we all enjoy a good laugh, whether the source of such voluble risibility is an off-color limerick, another befuddling day in the life of Homer Simpson, Cosmo Kramer’s latest “brilliant brain scheme,” the “funny papers,” or, ink the case of our course, the manic adolescent escapades of Paul Feig and Bill Bryson, George Carlin’s irreverent rants on everything under the sun (and moon, for that matter), the assorted true-life misadventures of David Sedaris and Beth Lisick, or Dave Barry’s reflections on the absolutely worst American pop songs ever written—all of which should confirm beyond a doubt that, indeed, “laughter is the best medicine” to cure those dispiriting “summertime blues.”

Required Texts:

Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty
Paul Feig, Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence
Bill Geist, The Big Five-Oh! Facing, Fearing, and Fighting Fifty
Beth Lisick, Everybody into the Pool: True Tales
Celia Rivenbark, We’re Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle
David Sedaris, Naked
Jean Shepherd, “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories” and Other Disasters

Last Update: February 8, 2012