Performance | History | Healthcare | Education
Free event with registration
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About this event
Join Public & Applied Humanities Professor Harris Kornstein in exploring research into two of drag’s more recent frontiers: digital performances of identity via social media, and children’s story hours. Drawing on their own performance practice, Kornstein looks beyond discourses of gender or sexuality, and instead focuses on the ways drag disrupts binaries of truth and fiction, visibility and privacy, and pleasure and politics.

This free lecture is part of the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences’ Downtown Lecture Series, which will focus on Sexualities, exploring the complex ways that gender and sexuality shape our lives, from the intimate to the institutional. Speakers for this year’s series will address the cultural impacts of drag performance, 19th-century sex scandals, reproductive justice, and how gender and sexuality are taught (or not taught) in schools. You can read more information about the series and speakers at https://sbs.arizona.edu/dls-2022.

About the Speaker
Harris Kornstein is an assistant professor of Public & Applied Humanities in the College of Humanities. Kornstein is a scholar and artist whose research and art practice focuses on digital culture, surveillance, data and algorithms, media art/activism, visual culture, and queer theory. Their current book project documents queer and trans cultural strategies that mobilize techniques of play, misuse, and obfuscation to counter surveillance capitalism. As a media artist, curator, and drag queen, they have presented work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and numerous other universities, galleries, and festivals. Kornstein has also served on the board of Drag Queen Story Hour.

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The 2022 Downtown Lecture Series will focus on Sexualities, exploring the complex ways that gender and sexuality shape our lives, from the intimate to the institutional. Curated by anthropologist Eric Plemons, this year’s series will address the cultural impacts of drag performance, 19th-century sex scandals, reproductive justice, and how gender and sexuality are taught (or not taught) in schools.

Launched in 2013, the Downtown Lecture Series was created to bring the university and Tucson community together in vibrant downtown Tucson to learn about topics that relate to our everyday lives. Over the years, SBS faculty – along with university and community colleagues – have shared their expertise, adding both clarity and complexity to important and fascinating social topics. The series has focused on happiness, food, immortality, privacy, truth and trust in the global scene, music, animals, woman power, and compassion.

More info on the specific speakers and topics can be found by clicking here, which will take you to the college’s website.