The IRB application process has been a long and tedious one, for my dissertation project "The Roots and Routes of Boylesque." But today, on this first day back in "the real world" after NYC Pride, I finally heard back. My application has been approved and I can begin my research project!

In the research, I try to discern whether (1) contemporary male dancers in burlesque dancing have been employing performative strategies in a queer world-making; and whether (2) those strategies have been increasingly explicitly and consciously formulated by the participants in Boylesque Festivals, which started in New York City in 2012 and has had incarnations in Seattle, New Orleans, and Las Vegas.