WGS Welcomes Kareem Khubchandani as F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Associate Professor
Please join WGS in welcoming Tufts Professor Kareem Khubchandani to Harvard! Professor Khubchandani is the 2025-2026 F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Associate Professor in Studies of Gender and Sexuality.
During his year at Harvard, he will be teaching two courses:
- Queer Ethnography -- fall semester, places still available
- RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Power -- spring semester
Professor Khubchandani is Associate Professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Decolonize Drag (OR Books) and Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press), which received the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship award, the 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno best book award, and the 2021 ATHE Outstanding Book Award.
His next book, Lessons in Drag: A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties is forthcoming from Brandeis University Press in October 2025. Later this fall (date tba, he will be delivering the F.O. Matthiessen Lecture on his work for this book.
He is co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press) and curator of www.criticalauntystudies.com. He holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and previously served as Embrey Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
The F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality was created thanks to a generous gift from members and supporters of Harvard’s LGBTQ+ alumni group, the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus (now the Harvard Gender & Sexuality Caucus). The resulting endowment enables Harvard to invite eminent scholars studying issues related to sexual minorities -- that is, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people -- or to sexuality, to teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The Matthiessen Professorship is named after F. O. Matthiessen (1902–1950), founder of the field of American Studies and a distinguished gay Harvard professor. Matthiessen chaired the undergraduate program in History and Literature at Harvard and was the first senior tutor of Eliot House.