RuPedagogies of Realness wins the 2022 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year

Voters have stumped for charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent over buck naked Canadians as RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul’s Drag Race has won the 44th The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.

RuPedagogies of Realness claimed 39% of the popular vote, putting a clean pair of stilettos between it and the second-place finisher, What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada. The early bookies’ favourite, What Nudism Exposes garnered a quarter of votes, while Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment hit third place on 16%.  

The win for RuPedagogies of Realness is a double triumph for its publisher, McFarland & Co, as the North Carolina-based academic press becomes the first back-to-back champion in the Diagram’s 44-year history following last year’s win with the seminal Is Superman Circumsized?. 

McFarland & Co had already made Diagram history in 2022 as it was responsible for a record three nominations in the six-strong shortlist with Jane Austen and the Buddha and The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More joining RuPedagogies of Realness. Two out of every three votes cast for the Diagram Prize in 2022 was on a McFarland book.

The Bookseller columnist and administrator of the prize, said: “It was one of the most exciting Diagram seasons of recent memory with a battle for number one that was as tight as Violet Chachki’s corset"—Horace Bent

While the final margin of victory was 14%, RuPedagogies of Realness and What Nudism Exposes were neck-and-neck for most of the Diagram election cycle until a late surge saw the former title pull ahead, perhaps mirroring Danny Beard’s shock win over Cheddar Gorgeous in the recently concluded fourth season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK”. This does reverse a recent trend of runaway Diagram champs, and is the closest race since 2016 when Too Naked for the Nazis beat Reading from Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus by less than 1%. 

Horace Bent, The Bookseller columnist and administrator of the prize, said: “It was one of the most exciting Diagram seasons of recent memory with a battle for number one that was as tight as Violet Chachki’s corset or Shangela’s tuck. So con-drag-ulations to RuPedagogies of Realness for its well-deserved triumph. And commiserations to What Nudism Exposes; alas, I think voters in the end were put off by its author’s clear naked ambition.”          

Tom Tivnan, The Bookseller’s managing editor and co-ordinator of the Diagram, said: “From the off, I knew RuPedagogies of Realness had the potential to excite Diagramistas with its academic jargon and pop culture portmanteau, a combination we’ve not really seen since 2010’s classic winner, Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way. 

“But I am blown away by McFarland’s colossal achievement of winning two Diagrams in a row, a feat which will echo down throughout the ages: McFarland has become the Hilary Mantel of odd-title publishers. And I reckon this might not be the last this award hears from them.”    

There is no prize for the winning author or publisher, but traditionally a "passable bottle of claret" is given to the nominator of the winning entry. RuPedagogies of Realness was put forward by serial Diagram nominator Graeme Innes-Johnstone, who bagged the claret in 2020 with his nomination of A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society. Innes-Johnstone thus becomes the first double claret taker in Diagram history. 

The Diagram which was originally conceived in 1978 by Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of publishing solutions firm The Diagram Group, to avoid boredom at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. 

The results in full 

39%  
RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning With RuPaul’s Drag Race 
Lindsay Bryde, Tommy Mayberry, McFarland & Co 
“Academic yet accessible” look at the cultural importance of RuPaul Charles’ global reality TV hit, and what the show teaches its viewers.   

25% 
What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada 
Mary-Ann Shantz, University of British Columbia Press 
“Original” perspective on postwar Canada by situating the nudist movement within the country’s broader social and cultural context and considering how nudist clubs navigated changing times. 

16% 
Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment 
Kathryn Duncan, McFarland & Co 
Duncan’s argument that the suffering in Austen’s novels meant the author “intuitively” grasped some the Buddha’s most fundamental teaching of the Four Noble Truths: “that life contains suffering… and that we can stop suffering by following the Eightfold Path”. 

10% 
Frankenstein Was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity, and Symbolism 
Michael Owen Jones, University Press of Mississippi 
A cultural history of food and folkways, from Mary Shelley’s monster to “how food is used and abused on the campaign trail [and] how gender issues arise when food meets politics”. 

6% 
Smuggling Jesus Back into the Church 
Andrew Fellows, IVP 
“Polemical but hope-filled guide” of how secularism has taken over the church and how Christians can recentre and revive their faith. 

4% 
The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More 
Ron Riekki, McFarland & Co 
Essays on the examination of the killer clown horror genre from its origins to today. Includes interviews with practitioners, such as the director of 2020’s slasher B-Movie “Kill Giggles”.