Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2019

Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures

The Rise and Fall of a Lesbian Social Scene

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Aims to counter the invisibility that often characterises social sites in the post-liberation rhetoric of LGBTQ histories

  • Combines theoretical breadth and depth with detailed ethnographic observation

  • Offers access to the insights of those who shaped how Sydney’s drag king scene came to be

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
  2. Encounters: Social Scenes as Critical Objects

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
    2. Scene Thinking

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 3-22
    3. Drag King Cultures

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 23-58
  3. Immersion: Participation in Sydney’s Drag King Scene

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 59-59
    2. Small Worlds

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 61-90
    3. Social Imaginaries

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 91-121
  4. Passing: The Ephemerality of the Scene

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123
    2. Scene Stories

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 125-155
    3. Everyday Archives

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 157-184
    4. Conclusion

      • Kerryn Drysdale
      Pages 185-195
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 197-203

About this book

This book takes the globally recognised phenomenon of drag king performances as an opportunity for critical inquiry into the rise and fall of an urban scene for lesbian and queer women in Sydney, Australia (circa 1999-2012). Exploring how a series of weekly events provided the site for intimate encounters, Drysdale reveals the investments made by participants that worked to sustain the sense of a small world and anchor the expansive imaginary of lesbian cultural life. But what happens when scenes fade, as they invariably do? Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures is unique in capturing the perspective of a scene at the moment of its decline, revealing the process by which a contemporary movement becomes layered with historical significance. Bringing together the theoretical tradition of scene studies with recent work on the affective potentialities of the everyday and the mobile urban spaces they inhabit, this book has appeal to scholars working across gender, sexuality and culture.




Reviews

“This book is a much needed and timely contribution to queer and performance studies as well as to feminist geography. … Drysdale’s book is much more than just an entertaining account of one of Sydney’s subcultures as she offers a theoretically nuanced expansion of concepts of scene and scene thinking. … this book is a much-welcomed contribution to its field as other scholars can draw on Drysdale’s work to fill the gaps the present case study was unable to cover.” (Maryna Shevtsova, Gender, Place & Culture, October 15, 2019)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Kerryn Drysdale

About the author

Kerryn Drysdale is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW Sydney, Australia.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures

  • Book Subtitle: The Rise and Fall of a Lesbian Social Scene

  • Authors: Kerryn Drysdale

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15777-7

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-15776-0Published: 04 June 2019

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-15779-1Published: 14 August 2020

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-15777-7Published: 24 May 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 203

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Gender and Sexuality, Queer Theory, Cultural and Media Studies, general, Sociology, general

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access