Harvard’s Latest Visiting Prof Moonlights As Drag Queen ‘LaWhore Vagistan’
Harvard University has recently hired a visiting professor in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality department whose alter ego is a drag queen who goes by the name of “LaWhore Vagistan.” The department announced in July it…
Harvard University has recently hired a visiting professor in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality department whose alter ego is a drag queen who goes by the name of “LaWhore Vagistan.”
The department announced in July it is bringing on Kareem Khubchandani to teach classes on “Queer Ethnography” and “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire.” Khubchandani has an extensive career in drag queen performance and is committed to bringing “the nightclub to the classroom, and vice versa, teaching critical race, postcolonial, and gender theory through lipsync and lecture.”
“I am an educator, scholar, and performer invested in feminist, queer, and trans everyday-aesthetics, particularly in South Asia and its diaspora,” Khubchandani’s personal website reads. “My work is committed to uplifting the creative ways that minoritarian subjects live inside of oppressive structures, especially how we use dance, fashion, and language to build something more beautiful for each other. I am an associate professor of theatre, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. I also perform as LaWhore Vagistan, everyone’s favorite desi drag queen aunty.”
The professor’s “Queer Ethnography” course will study “gender and sexual dissidents,” such as “gay neighborhoods, trans raves, sex work, lesbian parties, BDSM dungeons, AIDS activism,” according to Harvard’s official course catalog