Graduate Student, Gender and Cultural Studies
About
My doctoral thesis is intended to provide an analysis of the Sydney drag king scene, representing an alternative approach to existing scholarship on drag kinging. In looking at the 'communities of investment', my research interrogates how different 'flows' or 'layers' of desire both constitute and represent the various participants in the drag king community. This research utilizes the work of Gilles Deleuze as a tool through which these investments can be examined and to reconsider the theoretical conceptions of desire that are applied to the sexual subject.
I am also particularly interested in how an expanded concept of the archive can be harnessed to reveal underlying discourses that structure thinking about drag king practices. The ever-shifting archive of drag king culture generates a topological assemblage of the material and scholarly. In adding to this archive, my ethnographic research of the Sydney drag king scene aims to show how different participants are invested in drag kinging, and how these different investments intersect in the drag king event.
By conducting this research, I hope to facilitate recognition of drag kinging as an important cultural event imbued with meaning that expands our conception of this queer practice.
