Texas isn’t historically known for its drag queens, and neither are Christian colleges. But the two are combining to flaunt fabulousness.
Texas Christian University’s (TCU) Women and Gender Studies webpage advertises an alluring educational initiative: a Queer Art of Drag course.
Per the school, eccentric female impersonators ooze awesomeness to obliterate oppression:
Drag is an art form with a rich history of challenging dominant norms and systems of oppression; building queer community; and cultivating experiences of queer joy in a hostile world…
But it’s likewise been employed for evil, in conjunction with a word that may or may not exist: “logics.”
[D]rag has also been deployed in service of violent ideologies and can sometimes participate in harmful normative logics. Critical drag explores drag performance as an outlet for social critique, pedagogy, and queer world-making.
The college is draped in drag…
TCU offers many opportunities to learn more about drag, including courses, articles, performances, and lectures.
Examples:
- Critical Drag Symposium 2019
- Maria von Clapp & LaShawnah Tovah Read AIDS Poetry 2021
- TCU’s Annual Night of Drag Show 2019-2022
Not the least of the offerings is Spring 2023’s The Queer Art of Drag, taught by “Dr. Nino Testa, he/him (aka Maria von Clapp, she/her).”
The three-credit deep-dive’s syllabus notes that “harassment” promotes the idea that there are only two sexes. Furthermore, asking someone their sex is literally violence. It’s also racist:
Gender revolutionary Leslie Feinberg begins the book Transgender Warriors by invoking the violent question asked of so many queer, trans, and non-binary people: “Are you a guy or a girl?” The gender binary is enforced through compulsory norms, harassment, and violence in service of a white-cis-hetero- patriarchy.
To battle that egregious assault, students will accomplish the following:
- Apply threshold concepts in the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies (i.e. social construction of gender, sex, and sexuality; intersectionality; privilege and oppression; feminist praxis) to analyze diverse texts, contexts, and/or sites
- Analyze performance as critical intervention
- Engage queer theories in relation to performance practice
And, perhaps most magnificently:
- Develop a drag persona and create a virtual drag performance that demonstrates their understanding of drag as critical performance practice
Drag is indeed an art form; it’s a longstanding sort of entertainment. So are puppet shows. Evidently, puppets have an inferior publicist:
Public University Spends Student Activity Fees on an $11,000 Drag Show
New York Spent More Than $200,000 on Drag Queens — at Public Schools
Disney Casts a Drag Queen for Its New Superhero Series
And Christian institutions have evolved:
Iconic Christian University Asks Students to Pick From Nine Gender Identities
Christian Church Will Host Drag Show for Youth Ages 12-18
Male TCU students finding their inner magical madame will make their video debut:
Each student will produce a one-to-two-minute solo drag performance to be recorded,
edited, and shared with an open audience at TCU’s Annual Night of Drag on April 21. This is the culmination of our class discussions, brainstorming, and workshops. You may produce any kind of drag performance, and it need not include a lip sync if you have some other idea.
Other ideas include creations for kids:
- A traditional lip sync
- A vocal performance
- A dance performance
- A drag story or children’s program
- A sketch or comedy routine
Finally, students will complete a paper “written in the voice of [their] drag persona.” Two examples of personas are provided, one being “Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.”
In addition to birthing big-haired ladies, the course will hit at harm:
Names and pronouns are deeply personal. Assumptions about them can cause harm. In this class, we will respectfully use whatever name and pronouns peers, authors, and community members ask us to use. If we make a mistake (for instance, using the wrong pronouns or mispronouncing someone’s name), we will respectfully correct ourselves.
It’s a new day at American colleges and universities, including those that are religious. Old-school subjects no longer suffice; contemporary enrollees will delight in the ways of wokeness. And some on-the-ball students — not just zoology ones — will learn about eagle testicles.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
Sex Ed: Cartoon Network Teaches Seven-Year-Olds Some People Are Neither Girls Nor Boys
University Launches Gay Summer Camp for 11-Year-Olds, Will School Them on ‘Health Topics’
Biological Male Runs Away From Home at 21, Ends up Miss San Francisco and Maybe Miss California
Find all my RedState work here.
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