Disability & Storytelling

Catalog description

In “Disability & Storytelling,” we will approach disability through an intersectional lens as we consider how memoir, fiction, poetry, and film depict disability. In the spirit of the Disability Rights Movement’s call, “Nothing for us, without us,” our focus will be on art produced by people from the disability community, particularly BIPOC writers like Sherman Alexie, Octavia Butler, and Junot Diaz. We will consider mental health diagnoses and cognitive differences alongside physical disabilities, and reflect on how race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and other factors affect the experience of disability. We will juxtapose the medical model of disability (where disability is a problem to be “fixed” or “cured”) with the idea of disability as a social construct, and we will consider how disabled people have engaged in activism.