GDST 208 - Intro to Disability Studies

3 Credit Hours
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. The course is divided into eight thematic sections: Disability Normality and Power, Historical Perspectives on Disability, The Politics of Disability, Stigma and Illness, Disability and War, Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities Theorizing Disability, as well as Identities and Intersectionalities. Thus, during the semester, students will be engaging the following questions in different segments of the course: What does it mean to look at history from a disability studies perspective? What insights are revealed by such a historical perspective? How do disability activists contend with debates on the topics of abortion or mass incarceration? How do we study war, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from a disability studies perspective? How do disability and environmental studies intersect? Why have many disability activists eschewed the medical model of disability studies in favor of the social model? How have scholars attempted to theorize disability beyond the social model? How does the rhetorical shift in deaf studies, one that abandons the paradigm of “hearing loss” in favor of “deaf gain,” offer new ways of thinking about diversity? How does disability intersect and interact with racial, gender, and sexual identities?

Course Attributes: GDST - Intersectionality

Levels: Graduate Undergraduate

College of Arts & Sciences Race, Intersect, Gender & Soci