A Brief Tour Through Drag History

In this talk, Dr Jacob Bloomfield (author of Drag: A British History) provides a survey of the history of drag performance. Seasoned drag scholars will discover new faces, places, and anecdotes in drag history while newcomers will get acquainted with the basics, including styles of drag, major flashpoints in the art form’s history, and the very origins of the term ‘drag’. Throughout, Bloomfield demonstrates that drag’s popularity long predates RuPaul’s Drag Race. Historically, drag performers have been some of the most renowned artists of their day, prominent throughout the media landscape in theatre, visual arts, early film, early television, and even early gramophone record and radio. This was despite — and in some cases due to — the controversy the art form sometimes aroused.

Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Associated Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Researcher at the University of Kent. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023). His latest article, ‘“Little Richard: Down, Not Out”: The Quasar of Rock’s LGBTQ Iconicity and the Historical Reception to His Sexuality and Gender Presentation, 1955-Present’, appears in the January 2026 issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.