Book Talk | Kareem Khubchandani - Lessons in Drag

In conversation with Amanda Reid, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale, Khubchandani discusses his new book "Lessons in Drag." "Lessons in Drag" brings to life a vibrant and thought-provoking dialogue between scholar Kareem Khubchandani and his drag persona LaWhore Vagistan. Kareem delves into the lessons LaWhore’s drag practice offers about academia—shaping his approaches to research, teaching, and writing—while LaWhore reveals how Kareem’s scholarship influences her performances, inspiring her understanding of fashion, music, divas, and aunties. Together, their reflections and conversations weave a compelling tapestry of drag’s instructive power.

This is a brown bag event.

About the Speakers:

Kareem Khubchandani is the author of the award-winning books Decolonize Drag and Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife. He is also co-editor of the Lambda Literary-nominated Queer Nightlife, guest editor of Text and Performance Quarterly’s “Critical Aunty Studies,” and associate editor for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Kareem is Associate Professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University, and FO Matthiessen Visiting Associate Professor of Studies Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Amanda Reid is a dance historian who writes and teaches about queer of color critique, West Indian migration, and post-colonial Caribbean Black radicalism. Her current manuscript project, Smaddification: Dance and West Indian Decolonization, explores maximalist queer diaspora aesthetics in Jamaican concert dance to theorize West Indian regional visions of blackness, bodily freedom, and cultural autonomy. Her writing can be found in Theatre Journal and The Oxford Handbook of Black Dance Studies (OUP, forthcoming). Prior to coming to Yale, Amanda was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Humanities Center and a Lecturer in Stanford University TAPS (2020-2022). She received her PhD from the Department of History at The University of Michigan.

This event is sponsored by the South Asian Studies Council; Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and History of Art.