For retiring professor Larry Mintz, humor has always been serious business.
The former director of the Art Gliner Center for Humor Studies looks at humor in an academic sense.
“The first thing I tell my students in my class is, ‘If you’ve come to this class to laugh a lot, you’ve come to the wrong place,'” said Mintz, who added the purpose of his course, AMST433: Humor in America, is to analyze the social and cultural significance of American humor. “The study of culture using humor is not sujavascript:replaceBreaksWithP();pposed to be funny at all,” he said.
Now, after more than 30 years of teaching American Studies classes at the university, Mintz is hanging up his hat next semester to focus on his golf game, write screenplays and – just maybe – manage to watch sitcoms and read the funny pages without analyzing them.
Mintz got his start in humor while writing his doctoral dissertation on the “wise fool” in 20th century American literature. Mintz has also written papers about Charlie Chaplin, Philip Roth, standup comedy and comic strips, among many other things. Mintz began teaching at the university soon after earning a doctorate in American Studies and English from Michigan State University in 1969. After teaching English for a year, he got an offer to teach American Studies classes and soon began to teach humor classes.
Mintz said while many are skeptical of his profession at first, it takes “two sentences” to convince them of the validity of his work.
“Whether it’s family, sex, religion, politics, you name it – If it’s important to us, we use humor to deal with it,” he said. Mintz said he had wanted to do something with humor since he was in third grade, but never dreamed he could make it a profession. He worked as an American Studies professor for many years before beginning his work at the humor center, which was established in 1998.
When radio personality Art Gliner approached Mintz about beginning a humor center at the university, Mintz accepted and became its first director. Gliner said he established the center because he had been teaching humor since 1976 and wanted to “leave things behind,” such as the nearly 1,000 humor books and 350 humor videos he donated to the center. Gliner, who was not affiliated with the university, said he nominated Mintz because he was in the right place at the right time.
“I had known Larry for 20 years, and I knew Larry taught at the university,” Gliner said.
While Gliner admitted Mintz “had difficulty in the early days” of running the center, he added that “Larry brought a lot to the humor center. He is a world renowned humor scholar.” Mintz served as director for eight years, relinquishing the position July 1 to Health and Human Performance professor Sharon Simson.
Mintz planned to retire after the spring 2006 semester but, after hearing that the university was planning a Semester on Comedy and Humor for this fall, decided to stay on as a professor.
“The offer was too good to pass up,” he said. Mintz had sold his house and moved to North Carolina before deciding to stay for the additional semester, which has led to some tedious commutes. Mintz and his wife drive more than five hours to the university every Monday morning and stay with friends throughout the week. The couple then drives back to North Carolina Thursday night, after Mintz has finished teaching his final class of the week. This dedication is something that earned him respect from his peers.
Simson said Mintz is a “wonderful person” who has done some “really excellent work in the academic sphere of humor studies.” Simson had been working for the Legacy Leadership program in the center for three years before becoming director. The center, renamed the Gliner Center for Humor Communications and Health, now focuses on using humor as a “communication tool” to reach children and inform them about the dangers of obesity. While Mintz is trained in humor, Simson specializes in the health aspects of the center.
While Mintz may be done teaching at this university, he is not done with humor. Mintz plans to begin writing his own comedic pieces, including plays and screenplays – something he has “always wanted to do, but never got around to doing.”
Mintz has taught a variety of classes, including a popular course on pop culture, but it is the humor classes that are his passion. Mintz has not ruled out teaching classes at universities in North Carolina, but said they would have to be humor classes.
“That is the only way I would return to teaching,” he said. “I still love teaching just as much as when I started, but I want to stay in humor.”
Contact reporter Jason Koebler at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.
