“… a walking history lesson in heels.”

Cleveland Magazine

Originally hailing from just outside of Dollywood in rural East Tennessee, Dr. Lady J (known outside of drag as J Davenport, dissertation published under dead name) is a non-binary trans woman who holds a doctorate in Musicology from Case Western Reserve University and is the world’s first drag queen with a PhD dissertation on drag history, a working drag queen whose research and educational outreach focus on obliterating the erasures of queer performance from history and bringing forward the contributions drag performers have made to politics, music, film, fashion, and popular culture. Her dissertation "From the Love Ball to RuPaul: The Mainstreaming of Drag in the 1990s" has now reached over 4900 downloads and is available for free digital download HERE. (At the bottom of the page under the heading "Files" click “Download”) Dr. Lady J also served as the inaugural Director of Programming, Education & Outreach for Studio West 117, a new LGBTQ+ hub for the Greater Cleveland area for two years.

Lady J’s performances have included everything from an enormous trash heap puppet, the severing of heads, transformations resulting from radioactive injections, and historical queer monologues woven into tales of communal queer love and history. At her core, Lady J is a storyteller who transports her audience to another time, place, or dimension with each performance, vacillating between extreme personas, reflecting her own experience living with bipolar disorder.

Lady J's career as a drag performer led her to become the first drag queen to perform representing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at Cleveland Pride in 2017, as well as the Drag Queen Coordinator and one of three selected drag performers for the Gay Games IX Opening Ceremonies, a selected entertainer for the Ohio Burlesque Festival for  2015, 2016, 2017, and 2023, and headlined at the 2018 and 2019 Austin International Drag Festivals as well as the 2023 Hostess City Hoedown in Savannah, GA. Before leaving the world of academia she even sat on the American Musicological Society National LGBTQ Study Group board for three years, her review of Gillian Roger’s Just One of The Boys: Male Impersonation on the 19th-Century Stage was published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society in December of 2019. Recently, Lady J’s work on drag history was featured by National Geographic and her case study “Experimenting with Lady J: A Trans Take on Drag” will also be featured in the textbook Dance in US Popular Culture (Routledge) to be published in July, 2023.

Lady J has also sought to bring the nightlife scene and academic worlds together through workshops on makeup and performance as well as lecturing on drag history at CWRU's Musicology Colloquium Series, Spectrum's In (Queer)ies Series, the Western Reserve Historical Society (where she also displayed one of her costumes)  and her own Rock and Roll History courses (taught in varying degrees of costuming) where she uncovered hidden queer musical histories and how they intertwine with and influence more mainstream rock artists. She also spoke about her drag research and how "VH1 made her gay" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for PopCon in 2013. Lady J currently serves as the Official Drag Historian for the Austin International Drag Festival. Lady J has also recently begun her podcast exploring the history of drag, entitled Untucking the Past, where she examines how drag styles and goals have changed over the years as well as the often highly pivotal and overlooked contributions that drag has made to major alterations in music, film, theater, fashion, the visual arts, and pop culture in general.

Follow Dr. Lady J on instagram and facebook @theonlyladyj

Dr. Lady J is available for bookings as an Emcee, educator, public speaker, activist, and performer For more information contact her through fb, INSTagram, or email at

doctorladyj@gmail.com