Drawing on rich interdisciplinary research that has laced the emerging subject of drag studies as an academic discipline, this book examines how drag performance is a political, socio-cultural practice with a widespread lineage throughout the history of performance. This volume maps the multi-threaded contexts of contemporary practices while rooting them in their fabulous historical past and memory. The book examines drag histories and what drag does with history, how it enacts or tells stories about remembering and the past. Featuring work about the USA, UK and Ireland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Barbados, this book allows the reader to engage with a range of archival research including camp and history; ethnicity and drag; queering ballet through drag; the connections between drag king and queen history; queering pantomime performance; drag and military veterans; Puerto Rican drag performers and historical film.

In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK. This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them. Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens; engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity. Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.

This book explores drag performance in London since 2009 via the pubs, bars and clubs that make LGBTQ+ communities thrive. It studies the complex relationship between drag performance, LGBTQ+ venues and queer communities. In exploring drag performance, the book develops a greater understanding of the connection between drag performance and queer communities, in particular exploring how drag might facilitate queer communities and offer queer modes of survival and resistance for queer people. Through this, the book describes a contemporary moment in which drag performance is increasingly popular and increasingly important at a time when homophobic and transphobic violence is prevalent, and LGBTQ+ venues are often under threat of closure. Understanding the increased/increasing mainstream popularity of drag, the book examines drag performance that is connected to and resists mainstream attention in order to account for its complexity in London (and beyond). This book takes the author’s engagement with and love for drag and exerts a critical, political and queer pull in order to develop new terrains of queer studies and queer performance studies.

In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK. This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them. Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens; engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity. Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.

This book identifies and analyzes the ways in which RuPaul’s Drag Race has reshaped the visibility of drag culture in the US and internationally, as well as how the program has changed understandings of reality TV. This edited volume illustrates how drag has become a significant aspect of LGBTQ experience and identity globally through RuPaul’s Drag Race, and how the show has reformed a media landscape in which competition and reality itself are understood as given. Taking on lenses addressing race, ethnicity, geographical origin, cultural identity, physicality and body image, and participation in drag culture across the globe, this volume offers critical, non-traditional, and first-hand perspectives on drag culture.

It's a Drag: Cross-Dressing in Performance looks at how performers over the whole period of theatrical history have cross-dressed and why: to tell stories, to amuse, to create memorable alter-egos, to call attention to social and political issues, or merely for expediency. Janet Tennant considers the present and future, and whether the drive towards gender equality will render cross-dressing redundant.

This book is an anthology of Mark Edward’s creative practice-led projects. It transmits and communicates his research through varied artistic means, primarily contemporary dance, immersive art installation, drag performance, and photography. Through the innovative practice of 'mesearch', in which the author is both theoriser and theorised, this study delivers a personal, creative narration, combining reflections and emotions in relation to self and performance. Instead of being an attempt to undervalue or challenge the accepted notions of style within academic research, it promotes a freedom of expression which allows greater fluidity between the researcher, the performer, and the writer.