Patrick McKelvey
LightNews LightNews
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Patrick McKelvey
@pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
2.5K followers 5.5K following 730 posts

Performance historian, disability historian.

Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation (NYU, 2024)
30% off with code NYUP30
https://nyupress.org/9781479824878/disability-works/

https://linktr.ee/patricktmckelvey
Posts Replies Media Videos
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
New drag persona just dropped
Still from SVU that reads “Astoria Griddle” followed by an address and date
October 22, 2025 at 10:07 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Long Distance Queer Domesticity
Screenshot of text message with Anthony that begins with a picture of our whippet Shelby watching TV. Me: what’s she watching ? Anthony: United in Anger
October 9, 2025 at 1:35 AM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Today I ordered two new books by two of the best and also smartest people I know. You should do the same.
The Violate Man: Male/Male Rape in the American Imagination by Aaron C Thomas A Movement's Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theatre by Samer Al-Saber
September 30, 2025 at 1:27 AM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Playtime With Truvy in Four Acts
Truvy the whippet approaches catching a ball while her sister ignores her Truvy catches the ball! Truvy looks very snoopy like as she runs toward a ball still far above her Truvy waits for the ball to fall closer to her snoot
September 27, 2025 at 9:20 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Dem fundraising is now just the Erin Brockovich monologue
Five: that’s the donation I’m asking you to make before the End of Quarter
September 27, 2025 at 2:59 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
It would seem that I missed an email and Disability Works ALSO won the Book of the Year Award for the National Communication Association’s GLBTQ Communication Studies Division!!!!
Book award announcement described in post
September 19, 2025 at 3:00 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Over the moon to share that Disability Works received the National Communication Association’s Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies!
My profile picture with the award announcement
September 18, 2025 at 7:24 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Shelby when I gossip halfway across the house
Shelby peering out of a nearly closed bedroom door with her ears perked
August 20, 2025 at 12:16 AM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Shelby when I gossip
Shelby the white whippet on a tan couch with both ears comically perked up
August 15, 2025 at 9:35 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Shelburday
Sunny picture of a perky but skeptical white whippet named Shelby in my arms
August 9, 2025 at 11:06 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
“We need to talk about Truvy.”
Shelby the white whippet sprawled on the carpet but looking VERY stern
August 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Shelby broken when Truvy took her spot on the couch
Truvy the tan whippet posing cutely on a green couch; Shelby the white whippet on the floor in a position you didn’t know a dog could adopt, contorted beyond reason
August 5, 2025 at 9:20 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Sundays are for Celebrating Shelby
Shelby the white whippet and me, a white homosexual stare in the same direction in front of a colorful backdrop. Blues and greens abound . Same scene as in the previous picture, but now with kisses from Shelby and visible cold brew
August 3, 2025 at 7:32 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
six years ago today, Shelby modeled her back to school look in Provincetown.
a white whippet who looks comically eager to please sporting a rainbow-colored mini knapsack on her slim houndly body
August 1, 2025 at 5:45 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
So thrilled to see two of the most important and influential people in my life on this list! Congrats Clare and Mary!
2025 Lammy Award Finalists in LGBTQ+ StudiesLGBTQ+ STUDIES Dysphoric Modernism: Undoing Gender in French Literature // Mat Fournier. Columbia University Press Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life // Clare Croft. Duke University Press Queer Childhoods: Institutional Futures of Indigeneity, Race, and Disability // Mary Zaborskis. New York University Press The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China // Matthew H. Sommer. Columbia University Press When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader // Susan Stryker, edited by McKenzie Wark. Duke University Press
July 30, 2025 at 5:15 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Happy to share that "Disability Works" has been shortlisted for the Theatre and Performance Research Association's David Bradby Monograph Prize. Congrats to this stellar group of finalists!
'Broderick Chow, Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024. Lianna Mark, Theatres of Autofiction. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). Patrick McKelvey, Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation. (NY: New York University Press, 2024). Brahma Prakash, Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India. (Delhi: LeftWord, 2023). Ben Spatz, Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024).' .
July 28, 2025 at 12:45 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Back to using Scrivener for the new book and I cannot believe I wrote the last one without it.
Screenshot of Scrivener Menu: Folder Called "Rough Outlines" with subdocuments titled ASO Chapter Outline, Introduction Outline, and Housing/Jobs Chapter Outline. This is followed by a folder for the Housing/Jobs chapter and a series of sub-documents
July 24, 2025 at 10:48 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
*me and my book project
The final scene from Thelma and Louise: their car suspended over the Grand Canyon
July 19, 2025 at 1:38 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Now I get to share that Disability Works is a finalist for the American Theatre and Drama Society John W. Frick Book Award--and in some pretty stellar company!
John W. Frick Book Award Finalists Broderick Chow, Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity (Northwestern University Press) Lindsay Goss, F*ck the Army: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War (NYU Press) Kellen Hoxworth, Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Northwestern University Press) Bethany Hughes, Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity (NYU Press) Patrick McKelvey, Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation (NYU Press) Jon Rossini, Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama (University of Michigan Press)
July 16, 2025 at 6:41 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Today’s (long overdue) reading
copy of Margot Canaday’s book “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America” on a coffee table
July 12, 2025 at 2:54 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
I love her so much
A coy whippet poses in a beanie with her leg playfullly covering the tip of her snoot A cou whippet wearing a navy beanie posed from a different angle with a more dramatic flare
July 10, 2025 at 12:30 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
July vibes
A comically happy tan whippet named Truvy laying on the ground with her mouth agape and tongue outstretched
July 7, 2025 at 7:14 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Transcription error or Totally Normal voicemail from my mother ?
Automated transcription of a voicemail that ends with: I hope you didn’t have a good day bye-bye
July 6, 2025 at 11:47 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Today at Half Price Books
A copy of Marx’s theories of surplus value in a a glass display case
July 5, 2025 at 6:39 PM
pmckelveyphd.bsky.social
Review #3 of Disability Works is out in Theatre Annual!

Grateful to Clara Kundin for taking on this labor.
an image of text that says 'Patrick McKelvey. Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation. New York: NYU Press, 2024; 344 pp. Reviewed by Clara Kundin, Eastern New Mexico University Patrick McKelvey sets Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation within the historical context of the post-WWII United States, when vocational rehabilitation expanded to become the dominant framework for approaching disability. Through deep, archival research, McKelvey presents six timeframe preceding passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to develop studies representative of the the concept of"disability works" in the period "after rehabilitation." He defines disabiliry works as "the performance institutions and practices that promulgated labor as either an' .
June 28, 2025 at 8:00 PM