Take My Wife...Please

Like most couples, Alleen and Don Nilsen have shared a lot of laughs. But this husband-and-wife team has taken their love of laughter to the extreme. The ASU English professors have devoted more than 25 years to humor studies.

The two met in undergraduate school at Brigham Young University. Both later embarked on careers as English teachers that brought them to ASU in the 1970s. Their interest in humor studies developed out of desire to make their grammar lessons more interesting. They believed that students could learn as much—if not more—through language play and humor as they could through standard language lessons.

“Every joke is a miniature intelligence test that the class either passes or fails,” Don Nilsen explains. “They must therefore work very hard to catch on to the joke, and because of this they make a commitment to the learning process. If jokes and other humor are integrated carefully into teaching materials, it will make the courses more fun and more memorable. The punch line of a joke is a miniature epiphany.”

The Nilsen’s interest in humor studies grew and eventually led them to organize an April Fool’s Day humor conference at ASU in 1982.

“When we had the conference, we thought only those interested in language would come, because that was our approach,” Alleen remembers. “Then came all these nurses and doctors, physicists and philosophers; and it was great to see so many people taking humor seriously.”

That conference would be the first of six consecutive international conferences hosted by the Nilsens and ASU. The meetings each featured as many as 300 presentations. From that root grew the International Society of Humor Studies. The Nilsens were among the founding members. Don has served as executive secretary of ISHS since its inception, and Alleen has been the organization’s quarterly newsletter editor since 1988.

The Nilsens liken their work in humor studies to the experience of tourists hiking the Grand Canyon—the further into it they get, the bigger it grows. Today, the organization includes members from around the world. The annual meeting alternates between sites in the United States and other countries. In addition to language scholars, conference participants represent the fields of medicine, art, business, philosophy, anthropology, history, political science, social work, sociology, education, performance, and the physical sciences.—Jessica McCann