In 2011, responding to a few famous men’s remarks that “women aren’t funny,” Tina Fey wrote, “It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove it doesn't exist.”

In recent years, it has only become more difficult to argue the nonexistence, irrelevance, or inferiority of women’s comedy. This panel will explore the explosion in women’s comedy, including in novels, memoirs, stand-up, television series, and political commentary.

“Transsexualité, transidentité: un tabou français?” (“Transsexuality, transidentity: a French taboo?”[1]). Such was the title chosen by the online French news magazine France Infoto illustrate an article published in 2015[2]that discussed the lack of visibility transsexuals and transgender people still suffer from in French society.

Puppets are a universal phenomenon that appears in all cultures. Varying in size from the miniscule to the
colossal, puppetry is of an enormous diversity: from rounded (the string puppet or the marionette, the
rod-puppet, the hand- or glove-puppet, the finger-puppet) to flat (the shadow-show, the toy or paper
theatre); from 'living' marionettes and bodies fastened to performers, to 'held' puppets (Japanese Bunraku
theatre), puppets come in all shapes and sizes. Performances involving puppets are no less variegated:
spanning art forms as diverse as folk theatre and élite entertainment, one only needs to recall eighteenthcentury
operas penned for puppets; Gordon Craig's non-naturalistic refashioning of the actor as a