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In June 2011, the Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians featured "The Down & Dirty Show," a drag and burlesque show, on the official conference program. After the show, Stephanie Gilmore and Leigh Ann Wheeler heard provocative comments about it, some enthusiastically supportive and others highly critical. Eager to explore these responses and the politics of staging such a show at an academic conference, we invited several people to participate in an email conversation for publication. Our goal was to reproduce what Joan Scott observed in an earlier JWH email conversation about teaching-a discussion in which email technology encouraged "participants to be tentative, exploratory, and open."1 We thank our contributors, Carolyn Bronstein, Kathleen Brown, Andrea Friedman, Matt Richardson, Heather Spear, Susan Stryker, and Heather Wilson, for their honest, engaged, and searching posts. Together, they have produced a conversation that casts a bright light on some of the personal, political, historical, and contemporary meanings of sexual performance to women's historians. We hope readers will continue this conversation on the JWH website.
The Down & Dirty Show:
Mistress Victoria DeVille-"Why Don't You Do Right"
Foxy Tann and The Gentleman King -"Think Twice"
Sweet Pea-"What About Love"
The Gentleman King-"Run To You"
Switch the Boi Wonder-"Freedom"
Foxy Tann-"You Shook Me All Night Long"
Mistress Victoria DeVille-"Part of Your World"
Switch the Boi Wonder-"Minnie the Moocher"
Foxy Tann-"Sit Down on It"
The Gentleman King-"Like a Bad Girl Should"
Sweet Pea-"Dancing Machine"
Stephanie Gilmore: I am an assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Dickinson College and postdoctoral fellow in women's studies at Duke University for 2011-2012. My research is on feminist activism and identity in different geographical locations in the U.S., but in my work as a scholar-teacher-activist, I am particularly compelled by issues of consent and negotiation around sexuality, particularly performance and sex acts (as well as what constitutes a sex act), among students who have grown up in a don't-ask-don't-tell/sexual abstinence culture.2
When I saw The Down & Dirty Show on the program for the 2011 Berks, I nearly fell out of my chair. I have long loved burlesque and drag shows-I was in Columbus at Ohio State when the International Drag King Extravaganza (IDKE) was staged and saw a number of drag king troupes. As a...