ISHS History: The ASU Years Plus by Alleen and Don Nilsen a.k.a. Momma and Poppa Bear 1

1979: Some people thought that humor and science were a good match The 1979 Conference in Los Angeles was organized by Harvey Mindess and Joy Turek. 2

Other people weren’t so sure. -- Newspaper reporters loved to take photos of people in the audience who were asleep at a humor conference. 3

1981: Art Buchwald cautioned the ASU humor scholars. He came to lunch at ASU and warned: You won’t succeed because people can’t laugh for 3 days straight and that’s what they’ll expect! 4

1982: Tempe, Arizona he For our first conference Dick Saggio wrote that he had heard some ASU professors had mailed out 1,000 invitations to teachers writers, and humorists around the country,” and here he was “all three rolled into one” and had not received an invitation. Then he got a letter addressed to him, along with Erma Bombeck and editors of the Arizona Republic and Tucson Citizen, asking him to be on a lunchtime editors’ panel. He accepted and was as funny in person as in his note. 5

1983 Poppa and Momma Bear 6

1985 A newspaper reporter did a story comparing Gershon Legman’s participation to that of Dean Richard Cracroft who had come from BYU to talk on “Mormons’ Laughter on the Freeway to Perfection” 7

1985: Mel Lazarus Came to ASU Here is his Miss Peach Lazarus drew Miss Peach as part of his presentation. He told us he would sign it if we held an auction to benefit the conference. Although we needed the $ we were too rattled to figure out how to do an instant auction, and so it now hangs unsigned in our son’s house. 8

1986: Tempe, Arizona In Gabrovo, Bulgaria, the Museum of Humor and Satire had several cartoons of this famous American icon. In some versions, her arm was drooping, or she was sinking into the harbor. 9

1986: Sidney Harris’s Cartoon for Charles Preston’s “Salt and Pepper” Column in the Wall Street Journal We were tickled to see this in the Wall Street Journal. The next year they brought the original to us as a gift so we know it really was based on our WHIM conference. 10

1987: Tempe, Arizona The last conference in Tempe, was a grand finale. We sent out a call for ASU folks to host foreign visitors. Those who responded ranged from a Vice President to several secretaries, who still remind us when we happen to meet them. 11

1987 was the beginning of Glasnost. Five humor Scholars came from Russia. Here they are at Rawhide for the closing dinner. Surprises included: The men asking “Where’s the water?” They thought they were coming to Tampa, Florida. FBI agents attending the conference in Hawaiian shirts. A noontime siren from Tempe Butte warning us that “The Russians were coming!” 12

We returned the visit by going to Gabrovo, Bulgaria, to attend the annual festival at the House of Humor and Satire. Here are some souveniers. 13

1987: Here is the Romanian write up of the WHIM humor conference. You can see ASU’s Gammage Auditorium. 14

Recent History of the International Society for Humor Studies The 2014 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies was held from July 7-11, 2014 in Utrecht, Netherlands. Here is the 2014 ISHS Conference Web Site: : The 2015 ISHS Conference was at Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Here is the 2015 ISHS Conference Web site: in which you can find the 2015 ISHS Conference Web Site. The 2016 ISHS Conference will be held at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Eric Weitz will be the Conference Convener. His is If you’re interested in Humor, Irony, Paradox, Parody, Sarcasm, Satire, Symbols, or Archetypes, please click on this web site: