INTD 207 - Interdisciplinary Disability Studies

Credit(s): 3
Lecture: 3
Non-Lecture: 0
Humanities-based disability studies course explores disability in contexts that cut across the arts, social sciences, history, education, literature, business, philosophy sociology, social policy and law. As an introduction to the scholarly field of disability studies it draws across disciplinary boundaries and is not limited to one field of study alone, but is hybrid in its overview. Disability is not taken up as deficit or defect in the body/mind of an individual, but rather as a negotiation of power/privilege where difference serves as a field of ‘political struggle’. Informed by critical theory, dis/ability is understood as a discursive construction - a fictional “other” to the fictional “norm” - embedded in society. Dis/ability from this perspective offers a way to think about bodies rather than as something that is wrong with bodies.