Drag, Resistance, and the Classroom | TFS and Yorkville’s Dr. Tommy Mayberry on the Power of RuPaul’s Drag Race as a Teaching Tool 

If you ask Dr. Tommy Mayberry, RuPaul’s Drag Race belongs in the classroom. And with drag and teaching both under attack in our current moment, the timing of their second book on the subject couldn’t feel more relevant. 

Due out in fall 2026, RuPedagogies of Realness 2: New Essays on Teaching, Learning and Resisting with RuPaul’s Drag Race is co-edited by Mayberry, the Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation at Toronto Film School and Yorkville University, and Lindsay Bryde, the Senior Course Content Accessibility Specialist in the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Stony Brook University. 

In their upcoming “shequel”, Mayberry and Bryde bring together 14 contributors – academics, drag artists, and passionate fans, alike – to examine what RuPaul’s Drag Race can teach us about identity, resistance, and the state of education today. 

From a Conference Panel to Two Books 

The story of RuPedagogies is one that begins not in a classroom, but at a conference. In 2018, Mayberry – then still a graduate student – spotted Bryde’s call for papers for a panel on RuPaul’s Drag Race and cultural studies at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference in Washington, D.C.  

“I had just been starting to think about RuPaul as a teacher in a cultural sense – thinking about public pedagogy,” Mayberry recalled. “RuPaul uses the platform to teach audiences about queer history, queer culture, drag. My initial thought was, if RuPaul’s the teacher, all of the drag queens are like the TAs.” 

That paper and Bryde’s panel ultimately caught the attention of McFarland Publishers, who regularly exhibit at the conference and saw an untapped niche in the market: drag culture and teaching and learning. Mayberry and Bryde joined forces to imagine what a book might look like, eventually publishing the first RuPedagogies of Realness in February 2022. 

After a six-month breather, they were ready to start doing it all over again. 

A Shequel Born from Urgency 

RuPedagogies of Realness 2: New Essays on Teaching, Learning and Resisting with RuPaul’s Drag Race wasn’t simply born out of enthusiasm for the franchise. It came, in large part, from a direct invitation and challenge by Mayberry and Bryde’s publisher. 

When the pair submitted their initial proposal for a follow-up book, it included a range of potential topics – two of which focused on social justice pedagogies and on the rise of drag bans and anti-trans legislation worldwide. McFarland’s editorial team responded by asking them to make those two bullet points the entire focus of the second book. 

“They said, now feels like the time to bring critical voices in scholarship, in drag studies, in social justice studies, and have the book participate in this conversation,” Mayberry said. “And heartbreakingly, in retrospect, they had noted, ‘hopefully by the time this second book’s published, this won’t be the moment we’re in.’ That’s not the case. It’s actually even more needed now.” 

The book also underwent a meaningful subtitle change. What began as Teaching and Learning Under Attack became Teaching, Learning and Resisting – a subtle but significant shift suggested by McFarland that Mayberry and Bryde immediately embraced. 

“‘Resisting’ puts the active energy on the community and the voices, whereas ‘under attack’ put the active energy on the oppressors,” Mayberry explained. “The energy of the cover and the energy of the project is about resisting, about existence as resistance, and about queer, trans, and nonbinary joy as resistance, too.” 

What’s Inside | Ten Chapters, Fourteen Voices 

The RuPedagogies of Realness 2 collection features 10 chapters across three sections, written by 14 contributors – half Canadian, and half American. The voices range from university professors, to drag artists, to a self-described Drag Race “superfan” who also happens to be a professional accountant. 

The first section centres on personal narratives and queer joy, examining topics like reading literacy through the lens of gender euphoria, and what it means to teach queerly.  

One distinct chapter is co-authored by two drag queens and a drag king from Kingston, Ontario, who discovered through their archival research that their town was home to the very first drag story time in Canada. 

“They’re publishing under their drag names, which is really cool,” said Mayberry. “Their chapter goes through their work as local artists and activists doing drag story times and their community engagement.” 

Another chapter in this section pushes back against the assumption that queerness is impossible in rural America – written by rural educators and a local Appalachian drag queen who continue to do their work in deeply conservative communities. 

The second section takes a more classroom-focused approach. It includes a chapter by co-editor Bryde on accessibility and accommodation – examining both where the show models inclusive spaces and where it falls short, and what educators can learn from both for their own pedagogies. There’s also the accounting chapter: “The thesis statement is basically, is it worth it to go on the show? If you’re the first one eliminated, what did that cost you? It brings a real math and economics perspective into drag and into the classroom.” 

Also in this section is a chapter by Iva Pivalica, a Curriculum Design Specialist at Toronto Film School and Yorkville University, who examines the role of the judges – particularly Michelle Visage and the rotating roster of guest judges – as educators in their own right. 

“Iva’s work looks at how the judges essentially force a certain kind of drag excellence onto the competitors,” Mayberry said. “If you fail to meet Michelle’s standards, Ru’s standards, you can get sent home. It’s a really sustained, beautiful argument about the authority given to guest judges, and what we can learn from that in our own classrooms.” 

The third section moves beyond the show itself into activism and survival. One chapter details the experience of Texas-based artist-activists who faced legal threats under state laws restricting public drag performance – and how they refused to censor their work and found an empowering work-around that amplified their community’s voices and visions.  

Another unpacks a moment from the show in which Iranian-Canadian contestant Jackie Cox wore a star-spangled hijab on the American Drag Race runway, prompting Islamophobic questions from a guest judge, and uses that as a lens for exploring race, religion, representation, and identity in the classroom. 

Closing on Love | Mayberry’s Own Chapter 

Mayberry’s chapter, “You Ain’t ‘Scared’ of Me…You Hate Me: An Academic Drag Queen’s CRT-informed Response to Today’s Dragphobia and Transphobia,” closes the collection – and that placement, they said, was intentional from their co-editing perspective with Bryde. 

The chapter is adapted from a talk Mayberry has delivered many times as part of their public pedagogical scholarship and activist work. It uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) to unpack the layers of hate directed at drag performers and trans people, drawing a sharp distinction between fear and hate. But it ends somewhere perhaps unexpected: on love. 

“The third section of RuPedagogies of Realness 2 does a lot of the really heavy, at times dark, and traumatic work,” Mayberry said. “The risk is ending on a note that feels of ‘there’s no hope.’ So, I wrote a new conclusion to my existing work that actually ends on drag and love.” 

That ending connects back to the work of bell hooks, the late author, feminist, activist and scholar whose ideas about love, justice, and critical pedagogy anchored the first RuPedagogies collection. 

“As bell hooks shows us, justice can’t exist without love,” Mayberry said. “Yes, there is darkness and hate and trauma, and unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. But there’s also still love and joy and hope in all of this. And that’s why we do this work.” 

What Does Drag Race Have to Do with the Classroom? 

For those still wondering what RuPaul’s Drag Race has to do with education, Mayberry has a ready answer rooted in the concept of public pedagogy – the idea that students learn just as much (if not, at times, far more) outside the classroom than solely inside it. 

“If we think of the classroom as the only place our students are learning, we do a disjustice to them,” they said. “What they learn on social media, on the subway with ads, watching TV – pop culture and public culture are also always informing their identities. RuPaul’s Drag Race is popular culture. It’s public culture. And it’s teaching and we’re learning from it.” 

At the same time, Mayberry is clear that this book is not a fan celebration. It is a critical examination – one that doesn’t shy away from holding the franchise accountable. 

“Some chapters might actually upset fans who are like, ‘How dare you come for RuPaul,'” they acknowledged. “But the show, if it were being honest with itself, doesn’t claim to be a perfect representation of drag. It just understands that it is the biggest, most mainstream platform for drag in the world.” 

TFS and Yorkville in the Byline 

With their name – as well as Toronto Film School and Yorkville University’s – appearing in the book’s author bios, Mayberry sees the publication as part of something larger. 

“I hope folks at TFS and Yorkville might also start to see this as an example of what’s possible,” they said. “I’m a big fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I turned that into this together with my community. What does that look like for someone who loves stand-up comedy, or film production, or accounting, for examples? What happens when you bring your passion into your teaching in a critical, thoughtful way?” 

Each chapter in the collection includes what the editors have playfully called “mini challenges” and “maxi challenges” – discussion questions and assignment ideas inspired by the show’s structure, designed to make the book genuinely useful in the classroom for teachers.  

Mayberry hopes educators across disciplines will find entry points, whether they teach gender studies, business, design, film, or anything. 

RuPedagogies of Realness 2: New Essays on Teaching, Learning and Resisting with RuPaul’s Drag Race is expected from McFarland Publishers in fall 2026 and is available for pre-order now HERE.