In Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation, Patrick McKelvey traces the “confluences and contradictions” at play in disabled performance groups’ relationships to the US government’s vocational rehabilitation programs in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Grounding theatrical performance as an embodied display of and resistance to rehabilitation, McKelvey weaves together performance studies and disability studies to complicate common narratives of disability rights history. In doing so, this book provides a basis for future work that may emerge at the nexus of performance, disability, and history.
Articles by Travis York
Travis York is a PhD student in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. They have previously received a MA in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto and a BA in History from Princeton University. Their research centers around historical representations of disability in relation to the figure of the human, specifically within the realm of masculinity. Broadly focusing on the second half of the twentieth century, their scholarship questions how disability has historically been constructed as a social category.