front cover of Aunties
Aunties
The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila
Nadia Sablin
Duke University Press, 2015
In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin’s aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived—chopping wood to heat the house, bringing water from the well, planting potatoes, and making their own clothes. Sablin’s lyrical and evocative photographs, taken over seven summers, capture the small details and daily rituals of her aunts’ surprisingly colorful and dreamlike days, taking us not only to another country but to another time. Alevtina and Ludmila, now in their seventies, seem both old and young, as if time itself was as seamless and cyclical as their routines—working on puzzles, sewing curtains, tatting lace, picking berries, repairing fences—and as full of the same subtle mysteries. Sablin collaborated with her aunts to recreate scenes she remembered from her childhood and to make new images of the patterns of their days. In these photographs, Sablin combines observation and invention, biography and autobiography, to tell the stories of her aunts’ life together, and in the process, quilts together a thoughtful meditation on memory, aging, and belonging.
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front cover of Lessons in Drag
Lessons in Drag
A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties
Kareem Khubchandani with LaWhore Vagistan
Brandeis University Press, 2025
Scholarship and performance combine to show how drag can be a blueprint for critique, care, teaching, and worldmaking. 
 
Lessons in Drag brings to life a vibrant and thought-provoking dialogue between scholar Kareem Khubchandani and his drag persona LaWhore Vagistan. Beginning with an intimate interview, the book unfolds in alternating chapters where the two exchange insights, stories, and critiques. Khubchandani delves into the lessons LaWhore’s drag practice offers about academia—shaping his approaches to research, teaching, and writing—while Vagistan reveals how Khubchandani’s scholarship influences her performances, inspiring her understanding of fashion, music, divas, and aunties. Together, their reflections and conversations weave a compelling tapestry of drag’s instructive power. Witty, bold, and deeply personal, Lessons in Drag is both an invitation to explore drag as a practice and a celebration of its transformative potential.
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