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Gay Boy And Playboy Revues: Constructing U.S. Queer Collectivities In Networks Of Peripatetic Burlesque And Nightclub Drag Performers, 1933–1939, Kalle Westerling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Across the United States, in the mid-1930s, drag made a transition, along with much other entertainment, from vaudeville into night clubs. There, concomitant with developing notions of gender and sexuality, it became increasingly associated with the contemporary expressions of drag that we see today in popular television shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and in gay nightclubs across the country. In short, it became the queer form of entertainment. But in the 1930s, with such developing notions of gender and sexuality, it was not as easy as saying that it was a gay art form. Rather, as heterosexuality and heteronormativity took …