Thrilled to receive ATHE's 2026 Outstanding Article Award for this piece! (This is the first writing toward what I hope to be book 3, a history of the performance cultures surrounding service dogs in the 20th-21st century US) doi.org/10.1353/tj.2...
anthony petro
@apetro.bsky.social
Historian of religion, visual culture, sexuality Mostly nerdy academic stuff & whippet pics Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, & the Culture Wars (OUP 2025) After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, & American Religion (OUP 2015) https://linktr.ee/anthonypetro
Excited to see this excerpt from *Provoking Religion* in the Pittsburgh Review of Books today! #culturewars #art
The Catholic Provocations of Renée Cox - Pittsburgh Review of Books
On Tuesday, February 20, 2001, photographer Renée Cox joined the stage to debate William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil
pghrev.com
Disability Works turns 2 today, somehow! Help celebrate by 1) Asking your library to buy a copy 2) Purchasing your own copy directly from NYU Press for 30% off with discount code NYUP30 3) Rate it on Amazon/Goodreads As always, I'm happy to do virtual class visits! nyupress.org/978147982487...
Disability Works
Winner, 2025 Midwest Modern Language Association Book AwardWinner, 2025 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book AwardFinalist, 2025 Barnard Hewitt Aw...
nyupress.org
Check out Gabriel Chazan's review of Provoking Religion: "Ultimately, the strongest argument of the book is that the historian of American culture ignores the significance of Christianity...for an exclusive focus on queer history or politics at their peril." asapjournal.com/review/queer...
Queer Religious Forms: Review of Anthony Petro’s Provoking Religion - ASAP/Review
Anthony Petro’s Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars brings forward a significant counternarrative of the role of religion in American art during the 1980s and 1990s. This period is freq...
asapjournal.com
If you're the time of a Derby winner, and I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop, then who's flying the plane?
Delighted to share that *Provoking Religion* got Honorable Mention for this year's Best Book Award from the British Association of American Studies. This book was a decade in the making, and it's lovely to hear it is being received well!
Excited to share that *Provoking Religion* won the Popular Culture Association's 2026 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Book in LGBTQ Studies!
Review #11 of "Disability Works" is out in Theatre Journal! What a pleasure to be ready by Tony McCaffrey! dx.doi.org/10.1353/tj.2...
With many thanks to the amazing @mpgphd.bsky.social, a new site is born... www.anthonypetro.org
ANTHONY PETRO
anthonypetro.org
Friends!!! You know how obsessed I have become with Common Sense. Tom Paine published that pamphlet 250 years ago this January. I published an essay about it TODAY, in the New York Times. Common Sense remains relevant as ever. I hope you enjoy it. Gift article ⬇️⬇️⬇️
The Pamphlet That Has Roused Americans to Action for 250 Years
nytimes.com
This piece is getting picked up again, so I share it in honor of World AIDS Day: floridaphoenix.com/2025/12/01/h...
How HIV/AIDS got its name • Florida Phoenix
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first used the term “AIDS” on Sept. 24, 1982, more than a year after the first cases appeared in medical records. Those early years of the crisis were ma...
floridaphoenix.com
Humbled and thrilled about this upcoming roundtable on *Provoking Religion* at AAR Boston! Can't wait to see and hear from Siobhan Kelly, Wendy Mallette, Drake Konow, Kris J. Trujillo, William Stell, and Sam Catilin -- the provocations start on Monday, 12:30 PM in Hynes Convention Center!
As of twenty-nine minutes ago, I get to publicly share that "Disability Works" won the South Atlantic MLA Book Award!
Thrilled that my Theatre Journal essay on guide dogs and rehabilitation performance cultures is the subject of the first segment on the latest episode of On TAP! Many thanks for the hosts for taking the time to read and discuss this weird essay. www.ontappod.com
On Tap: A Theatre & Performance Studies Podcast
This podcast looks at topics of current interest to professors and graduate students in the academic field of theatre and performance studies, including new ideas, theories, scholarly methodologies, t...
ontappod.com
This podcast series by Lynne Gerber and her team about a San Francisco church facing the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s is simply stunning. Check it out!
When We All Get To Heaven
A queer church faces AIDS in 1980s and '90s San Francisco.
slate.com
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!!!!
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!
Hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families participated in a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome on Saturday (Sept. 6), celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church after long feeling shunned and crediting Pope Francis with the change.
LGBTQ+ Catholics make Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome and celebrate a new sense of acceptance
"Brothers and sisters, I say this with emotion: It is time to restore dignity to everyone, especially to those who have been denied it," Bishop Franceseco Savino said at a Mass for the pilgrims.
bit.ly
Grateful to have Review # 6 of "Disability Works" out in H-Disability! networks.h-net.org/group/review...
Garratt on Mckelvey, 'Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation' | H-Net
Mckelvey, Patrick. Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation. : New York University Press, 2024. 336 pp. $32.00 (paper), ISBN 9781479824878. Reviewed by Rachel Garratt (Independent Scholar) P...
networks.h-net.org
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
Opinion | We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health
nytimes.com
Notre Dame is running a search for the next Annenberg Chair in American Studies and Journalism (associate or full). Candidates will be expected to direct and teach courses for the Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy. Applications due by Oct 15! apply.interfolio.com/170389
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
Why do you appreciate unions? I’ll start: Weekends off Paid vacations Work breaks Sick leave Paid holidays No child labor Safer working conditions Health care and retirement benefits
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
The gradual inclusion of truth about the experience of slavery in American museums has been one of the most deeply researched and considered and consequential developments in public history over the last half century. Enraging we have to defend it in this way.
Author Q&A: Judith Weisenfeld on Black Religion in the Madhouse open.substack.com/pub/usreligi...
Author Q&A: Judith Weisenfeld on Religion in the Madhouse
We're thrilled to share a special Q&A with Judith Weisenfeld, who generously answered five questions about her groundbreaking book, Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wak...
open.substack.com
A decade ago today, Shelby bravely battled a tree branch at Amory park in Brookline
