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drdeclankavanagh.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in 18th-century Studies (Queer & Disability Studies). Author of *Effeminate Years* (2017); co-editor of *The Edinburgh Companion to Queer Reading* (2025). Views my own, not employer’s.
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Registration now open for this online #Queer #MedicalHumanities workshop. My session closely reads libertine poetry to prompt us to think queerly about shame & pleasure, whilst also inviting participants to write out their own pleasures. Looking forward to it: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-wor...

Selling a house is hell. A privileged form of hell. All property should just be abolished. I don’t think the estate agent appreciated my musings earlier. The door was shut rather stiffly.

This pride month, remember that the Captain of THE USS Enterprise is a queer former Borg drone and her first officer is her ex-girlfriend.

Exciting 👻

Remembering Le Flâneur, Edmund White. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Israel tells people it's safe to go and get aid from a site Israel itself set up. Then, they kill 31 people and injure 170 who are traveling to that site to get some food. Starve people, tease them with scraps of food, then kill some along the way. It's terrorism.

I take it back—there’s an extended discussion of waiting for money to afford to have “a new circuit put in”.

‘I found her out there On a slope few see, That falls westwardly To the salt-edged air, Where the ocean breaks On the purple strand, And the hurricane shakes The solid land.’ ‘I Found Her Out There’ (1912-1913) Thomas Hardy

‘Egyptian House’ in Penzance is orientalism if orientalism transformed itself into bricks and mortar. In c.1835 it did! Feast your eyes on an architectural style influenced by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.

Too hot for me

Trip around Mount’s Bay approaching St. Michael’s Mount from sea & spotting some seals on St. Clement’s isle at Mousehole. Not pictured, a black basking shark fin that cut up out of the water like a blade. #Cornwall

We did this. Proud of everyone who signed www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Sitting in a restaurant, a nice calm setting. A few other tables. People talking but couldn’t discern words. Then a new diner comes in and it’s like they are speaking through a megaphone. Everyone shudders. It goes on. Why are people like this? The loud voice.

I am sorry, but the ableism of this author is actually astounding. The performer is on stage and actually there to be seen. The concert goer is using a device to record them. The person might be visually impaired and using it as a visual aid. It’s literally none of the author’s business.

"History is a process, not a locked box with a collection of facts inside." Black Family & Community in 18th-Century Britain & North America, edited by Karen Lipsedge, currently open access: www.tandfonline.com/toc/yfch20/c... #18C #18thC #18thCentury #BlackHistory @bsecs.bsky.social

I am finding Roddy and Pamela’s frictionless world a bit annoying. Money is mentioned a bit, however, they have enough of it to buy Cliff End & restore it. Their problems are who to invite to a party (so far). I wonder if they get haunted because a ghost takes pity on them #Gothic #TheUnivited

More than 100 of the UK’s most high-profile disabled people urge the Prime Minister to abandon the “inhumane and catastrophic plans to cut disability benefits”. My exclusive: www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Thoughts: *The Uninvited* is about the suffering of women & the haunting presence of trauma in the everyday. The house at Cliff End is an ascendancy Irish house, though set in Devon. Macardle makes ghostly ‘disturbances’ gestures of resistance to an invariably male ‘order’. Liking it so far!

Kieran should be 43 today. The photo here is of his last birthday. Here are some words I’ve shared before to anyone who had experienced suicidal ideation. The love I have for Kieran I lend to you. Those of us who love the dead can love you, too.

📣 We are hiring! Poetry Ireland are seeking a passionate, qualified Librarian to lead the development of the new Seamus Heaney Poetry Library at No. 11 Parnell Square. ℹ️ Find full information and application details here: www.poetryireland.ie/news/poetry-... 🚨Deadline: Friday 30 May, 5pm #JobFairy

The tide was going out but in no rush

I have a whole week off email and MS Teams ahead and I have a few books that I just want to read/listen to for no other reason than I like the sound of them. I am a little excited.

Lovely to get my copy of Enable mag! It was great to talk about Who Wants Normal? (and many other things too). On newsstands now.

I’m profoundly sad to say that as of today, I’ll no longer be able to do my job as co-artistic director of #Touretteshero because of a recent decision by #AccessToWork to cut my support by 61%. Read & share this post, the hardest I've had to write: www.touretteshero.com/2025/05/23/a... 1/4

The lavender is the happiest it has ever looked!

Annual leave on

Our article 'Feeling Old in Eighteenth-Century Britain' with @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social is out online and OA in the JBS @thenacbs.bsky.social. It's about older people and the body and shows them having fun (as well as coping with the challenges of old age). ‪ doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2024.181