Madison Moore’s first class as an assistant professor of critical studies began with two minutes of booming underground vogue, or ballroom music — a cacophony of disco, hip-hop, electronic and house — that echoed off the white walls of the classroom in the same way music infiltrates an abandoned warehouse that performs as a temporary nightclub.
Onlooking graduate students at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design shifted anxiously in their seats as the music raged, albeit with amusement on their faces as they waited for Moore — in bright pink combat boots and a thick, silver chain necklace — to speak. Some of them took out their phones to record a video of the unusual presentation just in time for the sound to fade and their professor to introduce the lecture: “Hello, everyone. Welcome to the history and theory of performance studies.”
“Professor” is the latest title the truly amorphous and multi-hyphenate Moore, 40, claims in a way that brings new meaning to what an academic can look like.
“I’m very aware of the sort of impact that being a Black, queer, non-binary person might have in the classroom or on the students,” said Moore immediately following a session of their Tuesday class, a 3 hour and 20 minute event where they aim to keep student-led discussions front and center. They’re teaching students how to boldly take up space, a concept that took years for Moore — who grew up a pariah — to embrace.
Moore was raised in a working class family by their paternal grandmother in Ferguson, Missouri. They dedicated their childhood to learning the violin.
At 17 Moore was told they weren’t good enough to enter a conservatory. Deflated, they abruptly turned their back on music and was forced to find other interests in undergraduate school, where they eventually majored in French literature at the University of Michigan. Moore continued their education, pursuing a doctorate in American studies at Yale, but remained unsure about a topic for their thesis. Moore approached their adviser and mentor, Joe Roach, for advice on finding a focus, and Roach asked Moore what interested them in their personal life.
“Fashion magazines, shopping and going to nightclubs,” they said. “But those aren’t real topics.”
Roach contested and introduced Moore to performance studies, an interdisciplinary field that uses performance, pop culture and the arts as a lens to study the world.
“[Moore] was delighted to know that you can study what they’re interested in, you could do serious work and thinking about it,” Roach gloated about his former student over the phone. “There are departments and programs and professors who really are excited about the kind of research that Madison is unusually — and in some ways uniquely — qualified to conduct.”
Moore spent the remainder of their time at Yale traveling to and through New York City as often as possible. It was there where they honed their interests and how to use them in academia became palpable: They read Foucault on the train from New Haven to the city and interned at fashion magazines while their colleagues scorned them for not taking their education seriously.
“It’s been a journey of learning how to find your voice in these spaces that are not made for you,” said Moore about a concept they explored further in their dissertation-turned-first book, “Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric.”
Inspired by the glamorous Sunday-best fashion worn by Moore’s grandmother, “Fabulous” analyzes Black and queer fabulousness as a practice of resistence to a society that isn’t largely welcoming to those communities.
Back in the classroom, Moore engages their students with music and media influenced by Black, queer culture. The class watched “Making Sweet Tea,” a documentary about gay Black men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson, a researcher and performer whom Moore identifies with and is inspired by as an academic.
“Black, queer people are basically invisible and at risk, so I think that’s why it matters to me to be able to center those issues in the classroom,” Moore said.
Beyond academic work, Moore has reincarnated their musical drive as a DJ performing internationally at art institutions, nightclubs and festivals. Most recently they held a nightlife residency at The Kitchen, an avant-garde performance art venue in New York City, with an installation, “The New Eagle Creek Saloon,” an ode to the first Black, gay bar in San Francisco.
Moore found a way to marry their love for nightclubs and academia by once offering a seminar on clubbing at Yale, a topic that garnered negative feedback from conservative tabloids and media organizations that questioned Moore’s legitimacy as an academic.
“Madison is a scholar, they just dress better than most of us,” Roach recalled saying in Moore’s defense at the time.
Moore’s biggest motivator now is to encourage students to challenge the confines of academia and to be a mentor for others the way Roach was for them. Through teaching and exploration of the L.A. nightlife scene, they hope to expand education to all corners of Southern California, inside and outside of the classroom.
“People want to know things, people are curious, they want to understand the world around them,” Moore said. “You just got to make it accessible to them.”