Course goal

The course goal that I think that I have made the most progress towards achieving is demonstrating an ability to make connections between the information, approaches, ideas, and perspectives in this and other courses while discerning connections between the course materials and my own life. This is something that happens from time to time while watching movies or television shows on Netflix and even in conversation with friends. My little group of comrades will be laughing about a dumb video on Break or Youtube, and one of my compatriots will wipe away tears and say something to the effect of: "Why is this so damn funny?"  Here comes Zach to make this a learning opportunity for all, whether they want it or not.  I will dive into Bergson's writings about "mechanical inelasticity" and laughter as a form of correction as an explanation as to why we laugh at a guy slamming his face into a glass door that was so clean it did not even look like it was there.  All laughter has died in the room. I guess it does take some of the fun out of it. 

I would have liked to see more theories of humor or of comedy.  I know that there are more ideas than the ones that we discussed. Though, I suppose the purpose of the class was not to make us experts in humor theory, but instead give us a small glimpse into the topic.  This subtle tease is what is supposed to drive us to dig in and search for the proverbial tree of knowledge (of humor theory).

A commonly repeated phrase was "looking a familiar things with new eyes." A question I have is: how many familiar things did we look at with these new eyes?  I had never heard of any of the works we read in class. I think that having time to regularly discuss modern examples of these older texts and theories would have better facilitated the making of connections.

I would like to take this final sentence to say: I enjoyed this class; I'm glad it was not a bust.

That is all.