DISAB 3000 - Introduction to Disability Studies

What is disability, and how did we come to know and feel what we think we know and feel about this realm of knowledge and lived experience? Cultural ideals of beauty, youth, fitness, strength, sex appeal, social skill, mental acuity, and “health” all rely on norms of able-bodiedness, heterosexuality, and whiteness. We will thus approach disability not as fixed or singular category, but as a fluid, historically shifting, culturally-specific formation that intersects with race, class, gender, sexuality, size, and more. How do some bodies, minds, and psyches come to be seen as deviant and others as normal? What are the conditions and relationships of power that form the context for these processes? Which cultural institutions have historically disciplined disabled subjects? What legacies of resistance might we find in various forms of art and cultural production; in movements for social justice; and in feminist disability studies scholarship? Where can we look for models of kinship and community structures based on practices of interdependence rather than individual rights? We will approach these questions through a range of critical essays, novels, films, artwork, and community engagement.