Lessons in Drag
A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties
Lessons in Drag started as a performance by LaWhore Vagistan, the drag persona of academic Kareem Khubchandani. In it, she stages Khubchandani’s ethnographic research into accents, aunties, appropriation, and other topics connected to drag shows—the foundations upon which the book builds an autoethnography of the roles that drag and drag culture play in Khubchandani’s personal and professional life. By reframing lessons taught in drag as lessons in the study of drag, it argues that drag performance can be a tool for learning, research, social critique, and deepening critical engagement with media.
After opening with an interview between Khubchandani and Vagistan, the narration alternates between their voices. Khubchandani writes in an academic yet approachable way about his anthropological research and teaching methods, recognizing and harnessing the knowledge potential of club and drag spaces and reckoning with his inability to achieve scholarly detachment because of his membership in the culture. He approaches drag performance as a research topic. Vagistan’s voice, in contrast, is irreverent, colloquial, and no less pointed in its insistent exploration of drag performance as a research method. Together, they show that performance implies preparedness, research, rehearsal, and awareness, and that drag performance, in particular, is a “critical intellectual practice.” Indeed, there is a universality to its conversations about education, research, and pedagogy.
Specific in its analyses of drag performance through a South Asian lens, Lessons in Drag showcases the art form as an academic medium for the study of culture, performance, and identity creation.
Reviewed by
Dontaná McPherson-Joseph
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