kentucky.com – By Rich Copley
Transylvania University assistant English professor Kremena Todorova had just been introduced to the world of drag.
She specializes in the literature of marginalized communities, and at the end of a class on “passing” – the act of fair-skinned people legally considered African-Americans passing themselves off as white – she showed the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. The film chronicles the drag ball culture of 1980s New York, primarily involving impoverished, gay African-American and Latino people. They were men trying to pass as women.