Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood

Abstract

In recent years, a programme for young children called Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) has risen to simultaneous popularity and controversy. This article, written collaboratively by an education scholar and a drag queen involved in organizing DQSH, contextualizes the programme within the landscape of gender in education as well as within the world of drag, and argues that Drag Queen Story Hour provides a generative extension of queer pedagogy into the world of early childhood education. Drawing on the work of Jos e Esteban Muñoz, the authors discuss five interrelated elements of DQSH that offer early childhood educators a way into a sense of queer imagination: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship. Ultimately, the authors propose that "drag pedagogy" provides a performative approach to queer pedagogy that is not simply about LGBT lives, but living queerly. KEYWORDS Community-based learning; early childhood education; equity and inclusion; gender issues in education; queer pedagogy Drag queens have historically been relegated to the realm of the night. In the past few years, however, drag performers have made their way from the dimly lit bars of gayborhoods and into the fluorescent lights of libraries and classrooms. Drag superstar Nina West released a children's music album entitled Drag Is Magic in 2019, and multiple children's books about drag were published in 2020 (Bussell, 2020). These efforts build upon the foundational work of many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth organizations, like San Francisco's Queens of the Castro, which has explored drag with high-school students for the last decade (Hsu, 2016). In this article, we explore the pedagogical contributions of a programme called Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) as a form of queer imagining in an early childhood context. Through this programme, drag artists have channelled their penchant for playfully "'reading' each other to filth" 1 into different forms of literacy, promoting storytelling as integral to queer and trans communities, as well as positioning queer and trans cultural forms as valuable components of early childhood education. We are guided by the following question: what might Drag Queen Story Hour offer educators as a way of bringing queer ways of knowing and being into the education of young children?

Democratizing Creative Early Educational Experiences: A Matter of Racial Justice

“…Here, it is important to note the conflation of appropriateness and Whiteness (for related literature reviews focused on the field of early childhood education, see Pérez & Saavedra, 2017; Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018). A study undertaken by Keenan and Mess (2020) similarly underscores that the bodies most desired in society (straight, White, male, a certain type of maleness) are what schools seek to develop. If the status quo continues to dominate pedagogical approaches, the status quo is likely to be reproduced; Keenan and Mess thus offer drag pedagogy as a pedagogy of creative disruption, locating the need for creative experiences not only for young children, but also for teachers and how they approach early education.…”

“…Self-sustaining deficit narratives surrounding “genetics, cultural or economic disadvantages” are inherent in biased educational systems (Zhbanova et al, 2015). In defiance of growing diversity, schools continue to reward straight White male bodies (Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Keenan & Mess, 2020) while devaluing the cognitive intelligence central to Black and Latinx cultures (Berger & Lahad, 2010; Peltier, 2017). The educational complex narrowly defines literacy and giftedness, giving structure to implicitly and overtly racially biased educators, and cover to policies that close gateways to gifted and talented programs (Sullivan, 2017; Zhbanova et al, 2015).…”

“…Love (2014) calls for early childhood and elementary education pre-service teacher programs to include the creativity of hip-hop culture and pedagogies in early childhood classrooms, challenging what is “appropriate” in “nice” early childhood settings. Notably, although the politics of belonging suggest that some discourses, conversations, and cultures do not belong in educational spaces, such discourses, conversations, and cultures are often much more creative than what is allowed in those spaces (Keenan & Mess, 2020). Following a strengths-based approach and challenging the anti-Blackness and (un)belonging present in early childhood spaces, Wynter-Hoyte and Smith (2020) reveal how educators can use critical race theory and Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) 3 along with Afrocentrism as counterstories to the dominant Eurocentric curriculum.…”

“…The studies we reviewed underscore that early childhood in schools serving Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Color tend not to be creative places. Keenan and Mess (2020) point to the need to question the creativity of early education programs—even those that bill themselves as “creative childhood experiences”—attending to issues of categorization and performativity. It is important to unpack what really are creative educational experiences and commit to interrupting and countering dominant conceptualizations of creative educational experiences that are restrictive and exclusionary, including gifted education programs (Zhbanova et al, 2015).…”

“…Based on the literature we reviewed, queer theory offers a way forward to reimagine and democratize early educational experiences (Keenan & Mess, 2020). With an understanding that oppression is often intersectional, a starting point of queer theory could be strengthened with a more intersectional analysis that attends to race, class, ability, and other axes of subjugation and oppression.…”