The Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism program at the David Geffen School of Drama is pleased to invite you to an upcoming Hot Topics lecture at Humanities Quadrangle Room 276 on Thursday, November 10 at 3:30 pm.
Hot Topics Lecture Series features internationally recognized scholars and artists in the fields of theater and performance studies whose work speaks to the current moment. The series is open to the DGSD community as well as to students, faculty, and staff outside of the School of Drama. Hot Topics is made possible by a grant from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Funds at Yale. Please join us for:
Drag, Queer History, and Cultural Memory
A talk by Dr. Cameron Crookston, a lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, specializing in media, popular culture, and queer culture.
Cameron Crookston is a lecturer in the Cultural Studies program at UBC Okanagan where he currently teaches “Media and Popular Culture in a Global Context” and “Drag and Popular Culture.” He received his PhD from the Centre of Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. His work appears in The Drama Review, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, and The Journal of Homosexuality. He is also the editor of the 2021 anthology “The Cultural Impact of RuPaul’s Drag Race: Why Are We All Gagging?”
In this talk, Cameron Crookston shares his teaching and research on the history of drag and its relationship to queer cultural memory. As an educator, he has designed several courses that examine the history of drag as it relates to both theatre history and the development of queer cultures. From underground subcultures of the nineteenth century to the drag boom of RuPaul’s Drag Race, these courses consider how drag responds to and influences queer communities across time. His current book, Drag and Queer Cultural Memory, argues that a critical function of drag, as a queer cultural practice, is the performance, creation and circulation of queer cultural memory. Focusing on five case studies by drag queens, kings, and things from Canada and the US, this book explores drag’s relationship to queer temporality, kinship, nostalgia and memory.