Lawrence A. Walz Endowment for Film Studies

Established in memory of Lawrence A. Walz (1942–2025), this endowment supports undergraduate and graduate students in Film Studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Created by his brother, Joel Walz, with funds from Lawrence Walz’s estate, the endowment honors his lifelong passion for cinema and film criticism.

Lawrence Walz was born in Massachusetts and raised in West Asheville, North Carolina. He graduated from Lee H. Edwards High School, now Asheville High School, before attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1961 to 1969, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English. His areas of specialization were twentieth-century British and American literature.

After graduation, Lawrence had a wide-ranging career that included teaching literature at the college level, teaching English as a second language, and technical writing. It was his position as a technical writer that enabled him to return to North Carolina, where he finished his working career at the North Carolina State University Libraries. In retirement, he lived in Black Mountain.

Lawrence’s first love, however, was film. As a student at Carolina, he frequently attended the “Free Flicks” series in Carroll Hall, where students encountered major works of world cinema by directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, and Ingmar Bergman—films that were far less accessible in the era before streaming services and specialty cable programming like Turner Classic Movies. He avoided mainstream, big-budget movies his entire life, preferring instead ambitious and artistically accomplished international films. He built an extensive personal library of books on cinema and spent his final years immersed in reading film criticism. 

Lawrence’s brother, Joel Walz, of Easthampton, MA, established this endowment with funds bequeathed to him by Lawrence. Their goal is to help students live out the same passion for high-quality cinema, whether it be through scholarly research, critical writing, editorial work, or creative projects. 

The fund provides support for Film Studies students and initiatives in the following areas:

• summer writing stipends for graduate students
• undergraduate writing and research awards, including honors thesis recognition
• support for student editorial leadership for Aspect: Journal of Film and Screen Media
• student events and programming
• enhancements to the Film Studies learning environment

The Lawrence A. Walz Film Studies Endowment Fund will ensure that future generations of Carolina students have opportunities to study, discuss, write about, and experience cinema with the same curiosity, rigor, and enthusiasm that shaped Lawrence Walz’s intellectual life.