[Commlist] CFC: Queer Visibility, Online Discourse and Political Change: From RuPaul’s Drag Race to Drag in the Global Digital Public Sphere

CFC: Queer Visibility, Online Discourse and Political Change: From 
RuPaul’s Drag Race to Drag in the Global Digital Public Sphere


On both popular and academic levels, interest in drag culture has 
exploded since the reality-competition television series/RuPaul’s Drag 
Race /first aired in 2009 on Logo TV in the US. With the migration of 
the series to VH1 and global availability through streaming services 
such as Netflix, drag has become even more ensconced in mainstream 
popular culture, thus moving even further from earlier understandings of 
drag as a subculture of queer protest and/or limited to the gay club 
environment. For the most part, however, recent academic work on drag 
has focused on /RuPaul’s Drag Race/ itself for its textual/production 
qualities, contestant representation of LGBTQ identities, and physical 
viewers/fan communities, leaving unaddressed implications of how 
/RuPaul’s Drag Race/ has generated interest and participation in a 
particular drag perspective within the global digital public sphere. 
Concern for drag in a global digital public sphere should also consider 
the ways in which online discourse is shaping prospects of visibility 
and political change for LGBTQ individuals and communities around the 
world, particularly in increasingly isolated and politically regressive 
areas of the world.

Following the publication and success of /RuPaul’s Drag Race and the 
Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture: The Boundaries of Reality TV/ 
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), its editors invite chapter proposals for a 
new, edited volume concerned with the general themes of queer 
visibility, online discourse, emerging digital technologies, and 
political change as they relate to drag culture. Proposed chapter topics 
may consider, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

-Theorizing a global digital public sphere in relation to drag culture

-Drag and public discourse as they apply to online/digital spheres

-Political discourse and change within drag culture’s online/digital spheres

-The digital public sphere and self-promotional culture

-Authorized or unauthorized online extensions of /RuPaul’s Drag Race/

-YouTube drag stars, (micro) performers and online platforms

-The role of technology in creating a drag global digital public sphere

-Generational participation patterns in global digital drag culture

-Issues of labor surrounding online drag personalities

-Establishing a drag brand in the global digital public sphere

-What drag culture can teach us about emerging digital environments

-Relations and tensions between online and offline drag cultures

-Audience and fan roles in creating and shaping online drag 
personalities and cultures

-Emerging media’s roles in altering traditional drag labor, expectations 
and rewards

-Case studies situated at the intersection of drag culture and the 
global digital sphere

In particular, we seek proposals from outside North America and Western 
Europe to contribute to a truly multi-perspectival understanding of drag 
in a global digital public sphere. We also encourage proposals from 
newly-established scholars.

Please email chapter proposals of up to 500 words in length, as well as 
brief author biographical information, to the volume editors at 
(nbrennan /at/ fairfield.edu) <mailto:(nbrennan /at/ fairfield.edu)> and 
(dgudelunas /at/ ut.edu) <mailto:(dgudelunas /at/ ut.edu)> by 1 June 2019. Decisions 
on proposals will be made and communicated to authors around 1 July 
2019. Note that multiple academic publishers have already expressed 
interest in the volume.

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