“Traditionally, we think of drag as over-the-top exaggerated performances of opposite gender. However, drag is so much more than that,” insists Kai Prins, assistant professor of rhetoric in LMU’s Department of Communication Studies.
Amidst heated debate surrounding drag and its place within Jesuit higher education, the department is investing in the topic of study, and is providing advising support for LMU’s first student-run club related to the topic, the Display of Real and Artistic Glamour Club (D.R.A.G), founded by communication studies major and political science minor Matthew Antin ’26.
Antin’s curiosity about drag sparked when he worked as an intern at a talent management agency that represents big name artists including Trixie Mattel and Jujubee, but he was ultimately drawn to the creativity of artists who weren’t so mainstream.
Likeminded, Professor Prins’ scholarship is interested in the posthuman drag – drag beyond gender – that’s found in the alternative drag scene. Though their own character largely adheres to gender binaries, they debunk the common misconception that the art’s sole focus is on exaggerated performances of gender. “Drag is the art of exaggeration for an emotional effect, whether that emotion is humor or tugging on your heartstrings,” Prins explains. In their scholarship, Prins defines drag as a persona. Some perform outside versions of their own identities, or even versions of characters, non-human creatures, aliens, and monsters!
When Antin decided to do drag, he knew he wasn’t interested in being a feminine-presenting drag artist. His club meets once a week to watch a variety of shows about drag, including “The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula,” the show that helped him discover his own monster-like drag persona.
“I (Dyslexia) noticed there wasn’t an alternative queer space on campus for students to connect and talk about drag and other alternative drag shows that mainstream media hasn’t caught up to yet. I wanted to share that space with fellow students who appreciate drag for what it is,” Antin writes. He engaged Kyra Pearson, associate professor and co-associate chair of the communication studies department, and Stuart Moskovitz, director of LGBT Student Services, as co-advisors for D.R.A.G.
Professor Prins, who refers to themself as a “dragcademic,” with scholarship focusing on drag performance, has experience producing academic drag shows; and they are known as award-winning drag king, Will X. Uly (pronounced “Will Actually”). So, when Antin decided to produce D.R.A.G’s first show, he went to Prins for academic advising support. The show took place on November 4 and was co-sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies.
Antin’s goal was to create a fun and welcoming space where students could experience a sample of the variety of drag that exists. He wanted the audience to see that drag isn’t just what’s represented in the popular mainstream. Addressing RuPaul from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Antin writes: “RuGirl, no shade, it’s about self-expression, creativity, and discovering parts of yourself you maybe didn’t know existed.”
Prins agrees, noting that their drag character allows them to perform gender and experiment with it, but it also allows them to experiment with performance styles, new characterizations, and various aspects of their identity, like being Jewish for example.
Prins advocates for the value of drag as an area of study rather than writing it off as just entertainment. “Matthew did a very good job at thinking through how we talk about drag culture and individual drag performance… Through opening dialogue, he gives the drag queens an opportunity to reflect on what their performance does in the world – how it not just performs but is performative, for them and for their audiences,” they said.
As a student focused on relational communication, Antin is writing his capstone paper on drag and queer slang. He is interested in analyzing how the members of his club communicate. “We share a common understanding of the language, context, and references from the shows we watch, which creates a sense of community that might not exist in other clubs or academic spaces,” he writes.
This semester Prins is teaching Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, a course that surveys rhetorical theories, including classical, symbolic, argumentation, critical, feminist, and non-Western approaches to rhetoric. It dedicates one week to performance in embodiment, which may provide opportunity to discuss drag.
“What I do in rhetoric is deeply intertwined in performance studies,” Prins explains. When studying the performance of drag, one can analyze things like gender, identity, ethnicity, community, partnership, and friendship. “All of these things are communicative and performative in the rhetorical sense, so being able to understand how to create, enact, and then how to analyze this kind of performance is absolutely something that we should be doing in communication studies,” Prins said.
Bryant Keith Alexander, dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, who is a performance studies scholar, echoes the offering from Professor Prins and notes: “Drag, in its many evolving manifestations offer opportunities for all to explore a range of identities, known and emergent; not reductive to the politics of gender, or the even more reductive notions of sex and sexuality.
In many ways ‘drag’ allows the experimentation of being both fully human and with nature. It opens spaces and possibilities of being and becoming whole within oneself.” Dean Alexander notes that some of his early scholarship focused on the liberatory aspects of drag, and drag performance for everyone.
