Laughter and Learning at the Heart of American Film History

Comedy is unsettling, satirizing everyday situations and framing experiences. What impact does laughter have on us, and how can it help with learning? Film scholar Joachim SchÀtz is conducting research on the international cultural history of comedy in educational films, and his topic inevitably led this Schrödinger Fellow to the U.S., as he reports from Maryland.
Culture and Society
by Joachim SchÀtz
June 5, 2026
A young researcher wearing glasses and a jacket, standing in front of an old building with a park
Film scholar and Schrödinger Fellow Joachim SchĂ€tz is researching the role of humor in knowledge transfer. © private

What role does humor play in learning, or more specifically in educational films and videos? When and where, over the past 100 years, have audiovisual jokes been promoted or tolerated, or rejected as inappropriate when it comes to learning and explaining things? And what do the countless parodies of educational films – from 1940s Goofy cartoons to zany crafting channels on YouTube – tell us about the connection between laughter and learning?

For quite some time I’ve wanted to do research on these questions about comedy in educational films. After recently managing a project in Vienna on the history of Austrian educational films, I felt like broadening my focus on the topic to the international sphere, while also familiarizing myself with a different research culture. For my Schrödinger Fellowship abroad, I chose two U.S. universities: my first year at the University of Maryland in College Park is already drawing to a close, and my second year will be spent at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bronze statue of the creator of the Muppets—Jim Henson
One of the alumni of the University of Maryland is Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and – relevant to my research! – the Sesame Street puppets. This is his monument on campus. © Joachim SchĂ€tz

Perusing huge film archives

Berkeley is one of the world’s most famous U.S. universities and one of the most renowned when it comes to film and media studies. But why College Park? First, this is where Oliver Gaycken is teaching and conducting research; he is a specialist in the history of film-based knowledge transfer, and his papers were instrumental in the development of my project. Although we did not know each other personally – only through mutual acquaintances – he enthusiastically agreed to serve as my mentor when I asked him. Second, there is the film collection of the National Archives of the United States just north of the university campus – with only the university’s own golf course in between.

The building in College Park (left) houses the film collection of the U.S. National Archives. On the right is Schrödinger Fellow Joachim SchĂ€tz with Testudo, the University of Maryland’s mascot.
The building in College Park (left) houses the film collection of the U.S. National Archives. On the right is Schrödinger Fellow Joachim SchĂ€tz with Testudo, the University of Maryland’s mascot. © Joachim SchĂ€tz, Oliver Gaycken

Compared to what I know from European film archives, public access to the more than 500,000 films stored in College Park is amazingly easy: I can show up unannounced in the morning and request up to 15 films all at once to view that same day. The yield was particularly rich from U.S. military training films, since they come with extensive production documentation. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of these training films responded to the military’s loss of political authority with quirky skit formats that mimicked youth culture programs.

A visit to a private collector and a YouTube appearance

Another unusual aspect in the U.S. from a European perspective is the involvement of private film collection initiatives. Skip Elsheimer in Raleigh, North Carolina, for instance, has been preserving old educational films since the 1990s, showing them publicly, and making them freely available online for more than 20 years. Oliver Gaycken and I visited him in February, searched his collection for films from our wish lists, and appeared in his YouTube live stream A/V Geeks Lunch.

Two people in a film archive filled with countless reels of film
On a research visit with film collector Skip Elsheimer (right) in Raleigh, North Carolina, with mentor Oliver Gaycken. © Joachim SchĂ€tz

Although College Park is situated in the catchment area of Washington, D.C., it is a serene college town surrounded by even more placid suburbs. A subway line runs directly from here to the heart of the nation’s capital, home to the vast, freely accessible museums of the National Mall. Currently, there are also small groups of National Guard soldiers standing around looking a bit forlorn.

For weekend getaways, Baltimore and Philadelphia are easily reachable destinations in the vicinity. Another impressive travel experience for me was a guided tour of the sites of the Civil War battle in Gettysburg, conducted by a friend who works at the local college. Like so much here, this sightseeing route is designed to be taken by car. But daily life can also be easily managed with campus rental bikes, public transit, and occasional ridesharing.