Kareem Khubchandani, a drag queen who goes by the name LaWhore Vagistan, is now a visiting professor at Harvard.
Harvard University became the butt of all social media banter as it welcomed Kareem Khubchandani as the visiting professor to teach the Studies of Gender and Sexuality program in Harvard. Kareem’s stage name, ‘LaWhore Vagistan’, threw social media into disbelief and the right-wingers called out Harvard. The old interview of Kareem, where she described how she chose her name, went viral in the wake of Harvard’s announcement. “My name is LaWhore Vagistan, my preferred pronouns are ‘she’ or ‘aunty.’ I chose ‘LaWhore’ because my family traces its origins to Pakistan: Lahore is an important city in Pakistan, and well, I’m a bit of a w*ore,” the drag queen said in 2015. “And Vagistan because I see the subcontinent as one, big, beautiful Vag … istan,” he explained. “Close your eyes and visualize it: India is the uterus-vagina, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the ovaries, Afghanistan, Nepal, Burma, and Bhutan are the fallopian tubes, and Sri Lanka is a little floating labia,” she said.Khubchandani will teach just two classes over the course of two semesters — “Queer Ethnography” in the fall and “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire” in the spring semester, according to Harvard’s announcement. The latter class will apparently focus on the cable television show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Who is Kareem Khubchandani?
Kareem holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and prior to that an MA in the same field, and a BA in Sociology & Anthropology from Colgate University. One of her key works is Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which is a performance-ethnographic study of queer nightlife in places like Chicago and Bangalore..
