Crystal Brandenburgh, junior in history, read her paper “Hillary Clinton in Beijing: Feminism and the First Lady.” In this paper, Brandenburgh spoke about the importance of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the United Nations fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 on feminism and Hillary Clinton’s life as an activist and a first lady who defied the rigid definition as a first lady.

Clinton’s Beijing speech made women’s rights of international importance and created the idea that human rights are women’s right and women’s rights are human rights, according to Brandenburgh.

Brandenburgh also spoke about how Clinton used her position as a first lady to progress women’s rights and was quoted saying “I want to push the envelope as far as I can for women and girls,” by Brandenburgh.

Following Brandenburgh, Abby Stauffer, senior in english, presented “Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Queer Studies: The Ego Ideal, Patriarchal Tendencies and Gender as Construction.”

In this paper, Stauffer focuses on film, specifically “Return of the Jedi.” In her research, Stauffer examines Laura Mulvey’s idea that men fear emasculation and to save himself he will assert power over women, and in turn she becomes nothing more than a spectacle, according to Stauffer.  

Stauffer connected Mulvey’s idea to the theories of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud. Lacan talks about a mirror stage. In this stage, babies use their own reflection to recognize the concept of “I,” according to Stauffer, and in relation to this Freud believes the first reflection is the first experience with the “ego idea,” or the perfection toward what we strive for.

Stauffer examined how this reflection can take place in a movie screen. Stauffer shows things through Anakin Skywalker in the “Return of the Jedi.”

Through examining a scene in the movie, Stauffer said gender associations are arbitrary and put on and form from a stylized repetition of acts within a culture, similar to acts in a theater but on a larger scale.

In conclusion, Stauffer said there is a reason women are portrayed in movies the way they are and a takeaway is it doesn’t have to be that way.

Arline Votruba, graduate student in english, presented “Subverting the Patriarchy: Penetrating Male Dominated Stand-Up Comedy.” Through this, Votruba examined the historical context, joke structure, rhetorical subversion and joke analysis in relation to how feminist humor is used to identify how female comics are refuting the idea women are not funny and how they are changing the society around stand-up comedy.

In a historical context, Votruba said there are societal expectations that maintain the idea women are not funny.

“Humorists can enact political resistance by emphasizing gaps, holes or outright injustices within our societal structure,” Votruba said.

Votruba defined the structure of a joke. A setup is “a premise that draws to mind a person, place, feeling or thought” and a punchline is “an interruption of the intial story drawn from the setup.” In feminist humor, Votruba said the setup follows the hegemonic norm but the punchline reverts that and counteracts the hegemonic idea.

When analyzing jokes, Votruba looked at Amy Schumer and Aditi Mittal and how they are working against the historical idea and specifically how if they did follow the norms, the reactions to what they say would be different.

Votruba concluded by stating her findings were all based off of her interpretations and feminist stand-up comedy can join the other forms of expression.