The Biden administration is currently funding a book on “drag queens, trans cabbies, gay cruisers, and witch women” by a drag performer who writes LGTBQ books for children.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a $60,000 grant to Harris Kornstein, who performs in drag as Lil Miss Hot Mess.
Kornstein is the co-founder and board member of Drag Queen Story Hour and has written the children’s books “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” and “If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It”.
The grant, which was awarded in January, is for a book about how drag queens “playfully dazzle both human senses and computer sensors”, drawing on “case studies including drag queens, trans taxi drivers, homosexuals on cruises and witch women”. according to a report by FoxNews.
THE description of the research program says the book will focus on “obfuscation, gambling, and other queer strategies to counter surveillance capitalism.”
“This book project introduces a concept I call ‘digital enchantment’: a framework that explores how diverse queer and trans users subvert and expand traditional approaches to privacy by creatively harnessing the features of consumer technologies and creating their own platforms,” the description read.
“Prevailing counter-surveillance strategies uncritically celebrate visibility and representation while positioning privacy as an individual right rooted in hiding information,” he continues. “Drawing on case studies from San Francisco, including drag queens, trans taxi drivers, gay cruisers, and witch women, I turn to LGBTQ+ stories that complicate these assumptions. Digital Enchantment describes the hyper-visible glamour, mischief, and mystical intuition that many queer/trans subjects employ to playfully dazzle both human senses and computer sensors.
The author argues that elaborate makeup can disrupt facial recognition software.
Kornstein is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona.