Professor Lisa Colletta was invited to speak at an international symposium in Vancouver, Canada is summer. “Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice” brought together leading researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe to highlight the breadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy. The work presented explored centuries of literary and cultural production, a diversity of critical methodologies, and a range of popular and political applications.
In most theories of comedy, from classic treatises by Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson to recent polemics by Christopher Hitchens, women are figured as neither agents nor audiences of comedy, merely its targets. Only relatively recently have scholarly study and popular culture alike begun to recognize and historicize women’s active contributions to comedy.
Professor Colletta’s work examines the uses of political satire and the ways in which women use this traditionally male-dominated form. Focusing particularly on Tina Fey’s parody of Sarah Palin in the last U.S. presidential campaign, Professor Colletta discussed how Fey’s humor influenced the election, effectively moving beyond traditional forms of political satire and attacking a larger irrationality that now seems to define our mediated, postmodern world.
