|
|
Conference location: MIT Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge MIT Campus: campus map Conference is *Free* and registration is required
Find out more about conference registration
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE (April 4 & 5, 2008)
Friday, April 4
Saturday, April 5
Friday, April 4
5:00 - 8:00 PM • Registration: Outside room 32-123, Stata Center
5:30 - 6:45 PM •Opening Reception: R&D Dining Room, 4th Floor, Stata Center
Reception for conference presenters, performers, moderators, student organizers, GCWS Faculty & staff only.
Performance by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things: ' Building Boxes'
7:00 - 9:30 PM • "They Must be Hysterical!" An Evening of Feminist Comedy
32-123, Stata Center
Opening Remarks :
Chris Bobel, GCWS co-chair and Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston
Shane Landrum, GCWS Graduate Student Conference Co-Chair, 4th year PhD student, American History & Women's and Gender Studies, Brandeis University
Emily MacMillan , GCWS Graduate Student Conference Co-Chair, 2nd year PhD student, Sociology, Boston College
Performance
"They Must be Hysterical!" An Evening of Feminist Comedy
Four edgy and hilarious acts converge in an evening of feminist comedy. Followed by a moderated discussion with the performers.
Performers:
Erin Judge Stand-up Comedy by Erin Judge
Bio
Erin Judge is featured on comedycentral.com and will appear on Comedy Central's Live at Gotham TV show in its 2008 season. In addition to telling jokes, acting in sketches, performing characters, and producing shows, Erin is also an as award-winning writer.
Laughing Liberally (Desiree Burch)
Bio
Desiree Burch is a writer, comedian, actress, New York Neo-Futurist and the Executive Director of The Hysterical Festival (www.hystericalfestival.com), a new festival for women in all areas of comedy, debuting in October 2008. She is the former producer/host of the Smut Reading Series at Galapagos Art Space and creator of four full-length solo performances, including "52 Man Pickup," a salacious evening of sex and storytelling most recently featured in The Black Comedy Experiment. Her work has been featured at an array of venues, including Ars Nova, CenterStage NY, Dixon Place, the Marquee, P.S. 122, Carolines on Broadway, Gotham Comedy Club, NY Improv, New York Comedy Club, The Producer's Club, Joe's Pub, in Seattle's Mae West Fest, The Estrogenius Festival, The HOT! Festival, the New York City Underground Comedy Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival. She holds a B.A. in Theater Studies from Yale University and is a regular contributor at VH1.
Vijai Nathan: Good Girls Dont, but Indian Girls Do
Bio
In 1997, Vijai mortified her parents by giving up a career in journalism, canceling her wedding, and becoming a stand-up comedian. She has been featured at the L.A. Women's Theater Festival, appeared on the BBC and UK Comedy Channel's "The World Stands Up", and was the first and only woman to be nominated Comedian of the Year 2005 by the South Asian Media Awards.
Janice Perry My Dick is Bigger than Yours: Sexuality and Censorship
Bio
Janice Perry
has toured internationally with her solo stage work since 1982. She’s received multiple fellowships from the William Fulbright Commission and the US Department of State, the Vermont Arts Council and the NEA, and others. She teaches identity performance as an artist-in-residence at cultural and academic institutions worldwide. Her work has been adapted for radio, television and print in the USA and Europe (NPR, PBS, BBC 2, Channel 4, BBC 3). Perry’s recent interdisciplinary, multi-media work expands traditional definitions of Performance. See: www.janiceperry.com
Emceed by: Mal Malme, Queer Soup Theater
Bio
Karen “Mal” Malme is a theater artist, co-founder, writer and performer with
Queer Soup Theater, which celebrated its fifth anniversary this past summer with their production “lost + found: the anniversary series” at The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Mal performed in three of the pieces and contributed her original play “gutting” to the production, inspired by her experiences volunteering in New Orleans in the fall of 2006. Mal also tours her solo performance project “Still Married”, which received a 2006 Artist Grant from The Cambridge Arts Council, to schools, colleges, and conferences, in an effort to encourage dialogue on same sex marriage. By day, Mal works as Dr. Mal Adjusted at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a hospital clown for The Big Apple Circus Clown Care Program. Mal is also an advisor and board member with the North Shore Alliance of GLBT Youth (NAGLY).
Saturday, April 5
9 - 11 AM • Registration Open: Outside 32-124, Stata Center
9:30 - 10:45 AM • Saturday Morning Cartoons: 32-124, Stata Center
Description:
Come early for pop-tarts, cocoa-puffs, and cartoons! Saturday will begin with a screening of cartoons - old and new, rare and familiar - that offer ripe material for cultural analysis, feminist discussion and critique. We will alternate between short screenings and discussion throughout the morning.
Cartoons curated by Elena Marx, PhD candidate, History of American Civilization Program, Harvard University. Elena and Ian Condry, Associate Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies in Foreign Languages and Literatures at MIT, will be moderating the discussion.
Cartoon Screening list and schedule:
The screening list will be posted April 1, 2008.
11:00 - 12:30 PM • Student Panels: Section A
Room 32-155
CROSSING THE LINES? CRITICAL PERFORMANCE AND CULTURAL BACKLASH
- “Lighten Up? Race, Racism, and the Comic”, Tara Atluri, Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada
- “Tutti Frutti/Good Booty: Little Richard, Subversive Sexuality, and Humor”, Nora Morrison. History of American Civilization, Harvard University
- “Dirty Shorts and Muslin Curtains: How my Artwork Ended Up Under Wraps”, Rachelle Beaudoin, New Media Artist and Adjunct Professor at Keene State College and Chester College of New England
Moderator: Glenda Carpio, Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies and of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University
Room 32-141
LISTEN TO THIS: THE MEANINGFUL AND CHANGING SOUNDS OF LAUGHTER
- “Laughter as a Tactic for Surviving in Prison: Memories of Women as Political Prisoners”, Meral Akbas, Sociology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
- “The New Sound of Slap-of-the-Stick: Sound/Image Relationships in Looney Tunes (1937-1958)”, Andres Lombana, Comparative Media Studies, MIT
- “Your Body Must Be Heard: Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Cackling”, Abby Paige , Creative Writing, Bennington
Moderator: Meron Langsner, PhD Candidate, Department of Drama & Dance, Tufts University
Room 32-144
INNER CIRCLES/OUTER SPACES: LIMINALITY AND RESISTANCE
- “The Sycophant and the Jester: A Comparative Study”, Ayse Karinca, Anthropology, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
- “Laughing at/Laughing with/Laughing at: (Un)layering Hijra and Mainstream Performative Relationships”, Radhica Ganapathy, Theater, Penn State University
- “The Little Planet that Couldn’t”, Lisa Messeri History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, MIT
Moderator: Claudia Castaneda, Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Brandeis University, Emerson College, and the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at MIT
12:40 - 1:30 PM • Lunch
2:00 - 3:30 PM • Student Panels: Section B
Room 32-124
BAWDY/BODY LANGUAGE: SEX, POWER, AND REPRESENTATION
- “Robert Crumb: Drawing Misogyny and Sexual Violence”, Jimmy Stroup American Studies, California State University, Fullerton
- “Hot, Nude Ladies: Gender, The Body, and Humor in Campus Ladies”, Jenn Brandt English and Women’s Studies, University of Rhode Island
- “Mad about Mutually Assured Destruction: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the relationship between Fear, Farce, and Sex”, Elena Marx, History of American Civilization, Harvard University
Moderator: Yael Sherman, PhD Candidate, Women’s Studies, Emory University
Room 32-144
POWER PLAYS: HUMOR AND SOCIAL CHANGE
- “You Just Don’t Get It: The Uses of Humor in Conversations about Race”, Jennifer Dorsey and Jennie Weiner, Harvard Graduate School of Education
- “Flipping the Script about Race and Religion: Satire as a Resource for Faith-Based Multiracial Activism”, Lydia Bean ,Sociology, Harvard University
- “How to Do Things with Jokes: Humor and Discursive Power”, Ryan Wepler, English, Brandeis University
Moderator: Christina Bobel, Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston
3:15 - 3:45 PM • Coffee Break
3:45 - 4 PM • 2008 Mother Board Writing Prize Winner Announced
4 - 5:15 PM • KEYNOTE PERFORMANCE: S. Bear Bergman
MONDAY NIGHT IN WESTERBORK
Keynote Performance by S. Bear Bergman
Performance:
Monday Night In Westerbork draws from many sources, personal and historical. Bergman weaves in threads of hir childhood experiences at Jew Camp (and the survivors who shared the same camp), visits to Westerbork and other concentration camps, storytelling, tribe behavior, resistance and the experiences of being queer-as-in-homo and also queer-as-in-different in a culture which values conventional achievement as a mode of survival. The artistic mélange cooks up a piece that's unique on the theater landscape - a performance that takes the opportunity to educate about Holocaust, engages and challenges viewers, and manages to be funny, touching, brutal and deeply inspiring by the end of an hour.
S. Bear Bergman is a writer, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian. Ze is also the author of Butch is a Noun (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2006) and three award-winning solo performances, as well as a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics. Bear is also a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities regarding issues relating to gender and sexuality, and has advised the staff of numerous institutions on their policies regarding transgendered and transsexual students.
5:20 - 6:00 PM • KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Glenda Carpio
"WHY WOMEN AREN'T FUNNY" and other Laughable Myths
Keynote Presentation by Glenda Carpio
Abstract:
In the January, 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens published an article titled “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” in which he argues that the gap in humor between men and women has to do with reproduction. Apparently not joking, he writes that, “For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing,” and further, that the fact that women can conceive gives them “unchallengeable authority,” in the face of which men have had to develop a healthy and virile sense of humor. The April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair offers a counterargument, a pretty tame and polite one, given the vulgarity of Hitchens’s ideas. Examining the work of Moms Mabley, Josephine Baker, and Wanda Sykes, this talk explores the underpinnings of the Vanity Fair debate, historicizing it while also asking how race and concepts of physical beauty impacts it.
Glenda Carpio is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Professor Carpio focuses on African American literature and culture, literature of the African Diaspora, and Anglophone Caribbean Literature. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled, "Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery," and her writings and presentations include analysis of the works of Gayl Jones, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Derek Walcott. She is also co-editing an anthology of Caribbean women writers.
6:00 - 6:45 PM • Q&A WITH KEYNOTE PRESENTERS
Discussion with Professor Carpio and S. Bear Bergman about presentation and performance.
9:00 PM • Closing event
TBA
For more information about the conference or to register, contact Andi Sutton, GCWS Program Coordinator at: Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Building 16-287
77 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge , MA 02139
T el:(617) 324-2085
Email: gcws@mit.edu |
|
|
