History of College Humor On View at Wisconsin
Posted on August 27, 2008
Filed Under Media, News, Words, words, words | By Ari Finkelstein
The University of Wisconsin, that crucible of humor that gave America The Onion back in 1988, has been given a gift in kind—the largest collection of humor magazines perhaps ever assembled. According to the AP, the collector and former editor of the Gargoyle (UMichigan’s humor mag), John Dobbertin Jr., donated the collection, which will be on display through Sept. 15 at the UW-Madison student union.
Dobbertin’s cache includes more than 1,000 humor magazines stretching back to the late 1800s. About 200 covers have been selected and digitally reproduced for the exhibition. According to the article, the first college humor magazine came from Princeton University in 1834, while the well-known Harvard Lampoon started in 1876. While there were once hundreds of such magazines, current publication has fallen to just over a dozen, which makes this collection even more valuable. According to Dobbertin, students producing the magazines knew how to be funny, but weren’t so good at selling ads.
Has the humor changed, though? According to one English professor, “The humor is not as in your face as it used to be,” which he attributes to our current culture of political correctness. (Brandeis’s humor mag, Gravity, was shut down last year after publishing a fake advertisement for a “BlackJerry”.) That said, pundits worried about the decline of American humor will be pleased to learn that “the magazines, even in the 1920s, focused heavily on jokes about sex and drinking.” So they’ll probably be around for some time to come.
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