(Re)Naming Intellectual Disability in America

Catalog description

This course will study changing definitions of intellectual disability in 20th century America, from the eugenics movement at the turn of the 20th century (whose proponents urged society to defend itself against the "menace of feeble-minded"), through the rise of parent advocacy groups in the 1950s, the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s and 70s to the subsequent extension of full civil rights at the end of the 20th century. We wil lexamine how intellectual disability has been defined in medicine, the social sciences, and the law; we will also consider how portrayals of characters with ID in literature and film have been "defined.".