Drag Infrastructures: Networks of Gender Expansive Resistance

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

Drag infrastructures maintain the flow between local, national, and international levels of fame. They consist of the people performing physically on stage and screen, but also the bartenders, drag mentors, drag families, costumers, show producers, and musicians. They consist of physical spaces wherever drag is made, from bar bathrooms to bedrooms around the world. They are the set lists, brunches, and storyhours, as well as the posters, heels, shared or inherited supplies, and social media feeds. As Heather Love reminds us, one of the founding texts of drag studies, Esther Newton’s iconic Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, contends that the culture of drag performance is organized, quite literally, around infrastructure: the layout and architecture of the gay bar (Love, 2024). Participating in and calling for an infrastructural turn in queer theory broadly and drag studies more specifically, then, might be more properly viewed as a return; not one that ignores or rejects the post-structural origins of queer theory with its abstracted interest in drag’s relationship to gender itself, but one that looks for resonances across many approaches to the study of drag. As we consider the late-stage American empire, with increased and heightened attacks on queer knowledge production inside and outside the academy, our panelists turn to drag infrastructures at work, both contemporary and historical, ranging from the 1970s New York punk scene to the Mexican reality television show La Más Draga.

Thinking through drag celebrity, community care, and iconic(ness) in local drag scenes, Nino Testa and Catherine Evans offer a working definition of “drag infrastructure.” David Tenorio traces the complex ways in which digital space is used to reappropriate dominant cultural imagery in the Global South. By illuminating the praxis of jotería, Tenorio demonstrates how play can circumvent national borders, challenge the heteronormative logics of Mexican nationalism, and ground affective communities of care. Ryan Purcell argues that trans punk legend Jayne County deployed trans liberation protest aesthetics in her early performance career. Reading County’s underexplored advice column “Dear Wayne” [sic] demonstrates how trans community formation relied on a complex interplay of musicality, performance, print press, and celebrity. Tinamarie Ivey outlines what has been foundational to a long history of drag king celebrity impersonation: the reimagining and reinterpretation of archival materials. Through an analysis of the thirty-year career of legendary drag king Leigh Crow (who most famously performs as Elvis Herselvis), Ivy argues that drag king performance can itself be viewed as a kind of embodied archival production. Harper Keenan brings his perspective on drag pedagogy to the role of the commentator, helping us to think through the pedagogical implications of our pieces, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, as chair, brings his extensive research on Puerto Rican drag, including his recent work on Ana Macho, to ground the conversation in our conference site.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Isn’t it Iconic?: Drag Celebrity and The Maintenance of Our Worlds - Catherine A Evans, Carnegie Mellon University; Nino X Testa

• Dragging Jotería: Fumbling Toward the Jota/x Undercommons - David Tenorio, University of Pittsburgh

• Punk Rock, Jayne County, and Transgender Political Expression in 1970s New York - Ryan D. Purcell, Sarah Lawrence College

• Dismantling Bastions of Masculinity: Rebellious Acts in Leigh Crow’s Archival Practice - Tinamarie Ivey, University of Texas Dallas

Chair

• Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Comment

• Harper B. Keenan, University of British Columbia

Biographical Information

Chair:
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), Escenas transcaribeñas: ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018), and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and coeditor of Keywords for Latina/o Studies (New York University Press, 2017). His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails and Abolición del pato. Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010 and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens. He is currently writing a book on contemporary Puerto Rican performance.

Presentation 1 (co-authored):
Catherine Evans is a doctoral candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, and activism within 20th and 21st-century American literature and culture. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Radical History Review, Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, and Feminist Media Histories. She is currently co-editing a collection on drag, activism, and celebrity with Nino Testa titled Iconic: Drag Celebrity and Queer Community for the University of Delaware Press’s Performing Celebrity Series.

Nino Testa is a Visiting Scholar at the Women’s Institute at Chatham University. His current research utilizes oral history interviews to document the impact of drag communities in North Texas. He is a former board member of The Dallas Way: An LGBTQ History Project. He has published work in The Public Historian and Women’s Studies Quarterly. He is currently co-editing a collection on drag, activism, and celebrity with Catherine Evans titled Iconic: Drag Celebrity and Queer Community for the University of Delaware Press’s Performing Celebrity Series.

Presentation 2:
David Tenorio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Their research lies at the intersection of performance studies, critical infrastructure studies, nightlife, and queer/trans-worldmaking. Their writing has appeared in Transmodernity, Lateral, Latin American Theater Review, Centro Journal, The Global Encyclopedia of LGBT History, Cuban Studies, and JCMS. Their first book, Queer Relajo: Feeling the Nightscapes of Mexicanidad (U of Michigan Press, 2025), examines the entanglements of play, pleasure, and queer nightlife in Mexico and the US.

Presentation 3:
Ryan Donovan Purcell is an urban historian at Sarah Lawrence College. Purcell is finalizing the manuscript of his debut book entitled Sounds of the City Collapsing for the History of Urban Life Series from Columbia University Press, which explores the genderqueer roots of punk rock in New York during the 1970s. In addition to his academic work, Purcell has served as a consultant on public programs and exhibitions at the New York Historical Society and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He currently serves on the board of the Urban History Association, and the editorial board at the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York. He produces and hosts a podcast called Soundscapes NYC about how music created in New York has shaped the history of the city.

Presentation 4:
Tinamarie Ivey is a PhD Candidate in Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her PhD research merges historical analysis of gender-fluid expressions with the creative practices of male impersonation. Her work as a scholar and artist is grounded in the transformative power of theater, blending immersive community engagement with original play production to inspire social change. As co-founder of Sanctuary Stage, she creates productions illuminating marginalized communities' challenges, resilience, and environmental concerns, fostering critical audience dialogue. Her contributions include a chapter in the forthcoming Focus: Ecodramaturgies, and she has worked with regional and national theatre companies such as Dell’Arte International, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Cornerstone Theatre Company, Redwood Curtain, and Riverside Civic Light Opera.

Commentator:
Harper B. Keenan is the Robert Quartermain Professor of Gender and Sexuality in Education at the University of British Columbia, where he also serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. His scholarship addresses what and how adults teach children about the organization of society. Keenan’s work has been featured by academic journals like the Harvard Educational Review, Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, and The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, as well as popular press outlets like Teen Vogue and Slate. He earned a Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education, an M.Ed. from Bank Street College, and was a 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow. He is a proud former New York City elementary school teacher.