Kareem Khubchandani (any pronouns) is Associate Professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which received the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship award, the 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno best book award, and the 2021 ATHE Outstanding Book Award. Kareem is co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press) and curator of www.criticalauntystudies.com. He holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and previously served as Embrey Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Lessons in Drag with LaWhore Vagistan”
Dr. Vagistan, your favorite desi drag aunty, brings the nightclub to the classroom, opening up conversation about dance cultures, third world feminisms, globalization, and queer pleasures. Coupling critical theory with costume changes, she reveals how drag can stage postcolonial, ethnic, and gender studies by engaging sufi music, Disney imagery, Bollywood tropes, and ethnographic research.
Parking for evening events at PAS:
Gambrell Deck
1705 Lowergate Drive, Atlanta, 30322
PRESENTED BY: Department of Theater & Dance & Theater Emory
SPONSORED BY: Hightower Fund
IN PARTNERSHIP: Emory Pride Employee Network
“Critical Drag: A Workshop with Kareem Khubchandani”
Are you ready to lipsync for your life? I mean this quite literally: what can you know about your life, your self, and the world around you by lipsyncing? What can drag teach us about gender, bodies, aesthetics, politics, and our place in the world? How does drag give us tools to look differently into the world?
An introduction to drag practice that uses techniques that emerge from LGBT nightlife communities to explore our bodies, artistry, and ideologies. The workshop begins with improvisational exercises that help participants develop drag personas, routines, play with makeup, and engage movement exercises that help us find new aesthetics in our bodies.
REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP HERE.
PRESENTED BY: Department of Theater & Dance
SPONSORED BY: Hightower Fund
“Drag is For Everyone”
Khubchandani investigates how drag, and gender more broadly, has been privatized and delimited such that only some people have access to it, arguing for more abundance and access to fashioning gender. Khubchandani investigates who gets to define what drag is, where else we look for drag beyond mainstream venues, and how drag changes meaning and efficacy as it shifts across geographies. Connecting history, politics, and aesthetics, the author shows that every decision made in drag—from song choice to contour lines—has the potential to recall histories and discourses of empire building.
PRESENTED BY: Department of Theater & Dance
SPONSORED BY: Hightower Fund, Asian Student Center, & Office of LGBT Life
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