Harris Kornstein, PhD
Assistant Professor, Public and Applied Humanities
College of Humanities
2024 Early Career Scholar Award
"I'm honored to receive the Early Career Scholars award in recognition of my public-facing scholarship on queer play, which I hope not only contributes to academic knowledge but also has real-world impact on students, educators, drag artists, and others. In a time when LGBTQ+ studies and scholars are under attack, alongside others from marginalized backgrounds, it is especially important for public universities like ours to champion work that pushes society to be more equitable (and fabulous)." |
Dr. Kornstein is a scholar and artist whose research and practice broadly focuses on queer play through contemporary technologies and digital cultures, media art/activism, visual culture, disability, and queer and trans studies. Their current book project, Digital Enchantment: Drag, Play, and Other Queer Strategies Toward More Just and Joyful Technologies, considers what we might learn from drag performers to creatively counter many of the harms of digital technologies (related to surveillance, artificial intelligence, online harassment, disinformation, and so on), through playful techniques of misuse, obfuscation, and reinvention.