Disability Justice and Health Care

Catalog description

This interdisciplinary course examines the disability politics of medicine, health, and care. We will approach disability as a social category, culture, civil rights issue, and diverse lived experience that is inclusive of physical and intellectual disability, neurodiversity, chronic illness, and mental health. Students will be introduced to critical disability studies and Disability Justice frameworks to investigate disability’s intersection with sexuality, class, race, and gender in ongoing histories of pathologization and contemporary debates. We will study the nuanced critiques of medicalization advanced by disabled, chronically ill, neurodiverse, and mad scholars, activists, and culture workers. We will also explore disability-related movements and creative projects for reimagining health, care, and justice. Students will engage with academic scholarship, public-facing literature, memoir, commercial and independent media, and guest speakers in this remote, 4-week course.