Gina Barreca


Regina Barreca is an American academic and humorist. She is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut and winner of UConn's highest award for excellence in teaching. She is the author of ten books and editor of 11 others. Her weekly articles from The Hartford Courant are syndicated internationally by the Tribune Co. and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent of London, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. She is a member of the New York Friar's Club and an honoree of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. Her latest book, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?" Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times, was published by St. Martin's Press in the spring of 2016 and was an ELLE Reader's Prize selection that June. Currently, she is working on a book about loneliness.

Early life and education

Barreca grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York, and is of Italian descent. She was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar at Dartmouth College, where she earned her 1979 bachelor's degree. Her stories from this time can be found in her memoir, Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-education in the Ivy League.
She was a Reynolds Fellow and earned her 1981 M.A. at New Hall, Cambridge University, and earned her 1987 Ph.D. from the Graduate School, City University of New York, dissertation: “Hate and Humor in Women’s Literature: Twentieth-Century British Writers.”.

Career

Professor

From 1981 to 1987, Barreca was a Graduate Assistant/Adjunct Lecturer at Queens College. In 1987 she became an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she became an Associate Professor of English in 1991. From 1997 on she has been Professor of English. She has also been a Reed Fellow for English Language and Literature at UConn since 2017. As of 2018, she has received the American Association of University Professors Excellence in Research and Creativity: Career Award, and was named the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English Literature.

Author

Articles and other publications

She is currently a columnist for the Hartford Courant, as well as a blogger for Psychology Today, where she has over 6 million views.
Barreca has also published articles in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Chicago Tribune, Harvard Business Review, The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, The Orlando Sentinel, Ms. magazine, The Common Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Cosmopolitan and elsewhere. Barreca's books have been translated into Chinese, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
Barreca cowrote a series of humor columns in The Washington Post with Gene Weingarten about the differences between men and women. These became the basis of the book she wrote with Weingarten, I'm with Stupid: One Man. One Woman. 10,000 Years of Misunderstanding Between the Sexes Cleared Right Up. They worked for two years via email and on the phone without having met first.
Barreca appeared in Milton Friedman's documentary Free to Choose - Episode 6, as a student for Dartmouth College.

Books

In 2011, Barreca published a memoir called Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-education in the Ivy League.
Her most recent book, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?" Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times, was published by St. Martin's Press in the spring of 2016.
Currently she is working on a book about loneliness that will be released in 2020.

Speaker

A noted public speaker, Barreca lectures nationally and internationally about a variety of topics including humor, women's comedy, women's lives, everybody's stress, and gender issues in the workplace. She has served as an advisor to the Library of Congress for work on humor and the American character, and was deemed a "feminist humor maven" by Ms. magazine.
She has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, 48 Hours, The Joy Behar Show, Dr. Phil, and The Today Show.
Recently, Barreca joined the Mark Twain House and Museum Board of Trustees.

Personal

Barreca married her husband, Michael Meyer, in 1991. They live in Storrs, Connecticut.

Works and publications

Books written

She has received a number of honorary degrees. In 2000, she received an honorary degree from Shepard's College in West Virginia. She received an honorary degree from Manchester Community College in 2014, and honorary Doctorate of Human Letters, Charter Oak State College, Connecticut in 2016.