Class profile: ‘Laughing at History’

Imagine popping into class for an early evening comedy film every few days. That’s exactly what students in Victoria Belco’s “Laughing at History” course get to do.

In the class, students watch comedies that are either set in Europe or were made there, though they’re “not always funny in the ‘haha’ sense: some have a darker humor,” Belco said.

Belco begins the class with a short introduction about the film and its subject before she plays it. Since the class ends at 8:45 p.m., there is little discussion after the film. Instead, the discussion continues on D2L. Students also turn in short essays each week that are either about one film or compare two different films.

In addition to watching films in class, Belco also assigns films for students to watch on their own time; these are often included in the essay assignments.

Belco explained that she shows films in chronological order, though not the order they were made but in the order of what they represent.

“The first week, we watched Black and White in Color, which is a French film about World War I [set] in Africa,” she explained. “It doesn’t sound very funny, but it is.”

Last week, they watched Mediterraneo, a film about Italian soldiers who end up on a Greek island during World War II.

“We watched the film Ninotchka, an American movie about a Russian woman who goes to Paris. And two weeks ago, we watched a movie called To Be or Not to Be, about some Polish actors in the Polish Underground, which is really hilarious,” Belco said.

Belco said that each year she teaches the class for one term and likes to focus on a different topic each time. She enjoys this one because it can be funny.

“You don’t think of comedy or humor much when you think of 20th-century Europe because it was a pretty bleak [time] there, in many ways,” Belco said. “But there are some very good comedies—some not so funny, more of a sad-funny—that have been made.”

Belco made sure to point out that the class is a history class and not a film class.

“So we’re not talking about film per se, but students talk about whether things are being satirized, [or are] slapstick, funny, [comedies] of manners or romantic comedies.”

They discuss these film aspects a little bit, but Belco said they really talk about how the film relates to the history of what was going on.

In the past, Belco taught the class on other topics, including Italy from 1945 to the present, modern Ireland, filming Europe and World War II. Next year she will switch it up again, but has not yet decided on a focus.

“I may…be teaching mysteries set in historical periods, but they’ll still be 20th-century Europe,” Belco said, “or I might be teaching a more serious class about different wars, but they’re not about the wars per se, and are more about the people in them.”