Tracing his trajectory across three intellectual projects—one on queer Indian nightlife, the second on drag performance, and the most recent on the figure of the aunty in South Asian public culture—Kareem Khubchandani explores co-constitutive relationships between research, teaching, and artistry. This workshop maps out his academic personas, the various roles he has been cast into by his research subjects, audiences, and students in order to center and interrogate the academic’s body. Where the scholar’s body is often obscured in preference for their mind, evacuating the body from academic labor is a luxury rarely available to queer people of color. Kareem's introduction serves as an opportunity to collectively think through about the pitfalls and possibilities of self-fashioning in the academy for minoritarian subjects.

Registration is MANDATORY. Pre-work will be circulated. Please register at this link.

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About the Speaker

Kareem Khubchandani is Associate Professor in theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. He is the author of the award-winning Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife, co-editor of the Lambda Literary-nominated Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and author of Decolonize Drag (OR Books, forthcoming 2023). He serves as associate editor for GLQ, and was guest editor of “Critical Aunty Studies” a special issue of Text and Performance Quarterly, “Transnational Figurations of the South Asian Aunty,” a special issue of South Asia, and “Queer Pedagogy in Theatre and Performance” a special issue of Theatre Topics.

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This event is also co-sponsored by ITALIC, an arts-minded, residence-based academic program for first year Stanford students.