Sissy That Performance Script! The Queer Pedagogy of RuPaul’s Drag Race

  • Colin Whitworth
Chapter
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Abstract

This chapter uses autoethnographic writing to interrogate the author’s sense making processes regarding his own queer identity, focusing in particular on the effects of RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) as an example of mediated queer representation. Elaborating on writings that posit that drag can function as a performative pedagogy for gender, the narratives offered in this chapter situate RPDR as central to understanding, enacting, and reifying certain elements of queer performance scripts. The chapter concludes as the author uses existing scholarship on mediated representations to ask what does RPDR do well, and what could the show do better—critically and analytically turning to question RPDR’s efficacy as queer cultural representation.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Colin Whitworth
    • 1
  1. 1.Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondaleUSA

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