Disability, Embodiment, and Social Justice

What does it mean to be disabled in America? This course will examine disability less as condition affecting individual bodies than as a social, environmental, and historical phenomenon. We will investigate the role of culture in shaping and reflecting on disability in contemporary American culture.  How have philosophers, policy makers, authors and artists framed the political and ethical debates surrounding the status of disability?  How have imaginative representations in literature, film, and the visual arts contributed to and/or challenged those understandings?  Given that nearly every one of us will be disabled at some point in life, these questions could not be more important.  This course seeks to address them by considering a broad array of texts, including philosophical debates about morality and ethics, history, and literary, filmic, and visual representations. In addition to our consideration of cultural representations, an experiential learning requirement will also give students the opportunity to work closely with an organization dedicated to serving the needs of people with disabilities.