(Re)Framing Disability Intersections with Race, National Origin, & Culture in Spain and the…

Catalog description

The course examines the notion of difference and its colonial roots to understand how it has historically permeated views of disability and its intersections with other categories of difference, including race, national origin, and culture in the U.S. and Spain. We will examine how research communities have been complicit in using the idea of difference to portray these groups in deficient ways. The course is designed to disrupt individual centered conceptions of disability and to challenge deterministic and static visions of culture. Moreover, we will unpack disability intersectionalities with explicit attention to history and power in these national contexts. The course is organized around interdisciplinary themes that include the construction of identities, the study of interactional ecologies through attention to talk and narratives, analysis of professional authority in professional encounters, institutional practices (e.g., diagnosis, classification) and spatial considerations. Students will participate in field trips to educational institutions in Madrid to observe and interview actors working with individuals that embody the categories covered in the course. These trips will enrich the review of the course materials and inform students' completion of assignments.