Deemed a "feminist humor maven" by Ms. Magazine and "Very, very funny. For a woman." by Dave Barry, Gina Barreca believes that, "Humor is a way to make trouble, a way to get at issues, even difficult ones."

A professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, she is a humorist, academic and author most recently of the book, It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World. Barreca has appeared on 20/20, 48 Hours, NPR, the BBC, The Today Show, CNN, Joy Behar, and Oprah to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor.

Barreca also writes a weekly column for the Hartford Courant, and is a contributing blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Brainstorm" section and for Psychology Today. She has published articles in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Ms. magazine, and many other publications, and occasionally spars with Gene Weingarten, her former co-author of I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 Years of Misunderstandings between the Sexes Cleared Right Up in his "Below the Beltway" column in The Washington Post.

Barreca's eight books include the best-selling, They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor, and Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League. She is also the editor of seventeen books, including The Signet Book of American Humor, The Penguin Book of Women's Humor, The Erotics of Instruction, and A Sit-Down With the Sopranos.

She has degrees from Dartmouth College, Cambridge University, and the City University of New York.

NOTE: Bio is as it appeared in The Forum program on October 2, 2010.