Disability Studies Cluster
Department website: http://www.wesleyan.edu/disabilitystudies/
COORDINATOR
Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field that studies the systems of classification—medical, legal, social, cultural, historical—that organize bodily and psychological difference. Scholars in Disability Studies begin from the perspective that definitions of dis/ability vary historically and cross-culturally, and that bodily norms derived from these definitions have political, social, and economic ramifications for both disabled and nondisabled people. The field explores disability as a social and historical construction, a political identity, and a lived experience.
The Disability Studies course cluster at Wesleyan highlights courses across all divisions that explore disability from a wide range of perspectives. Courses in the cluster give students an introduction to the historical origins of disability, social and scientific classifications of embodied difference, artistic and literary representations of disability, and ongoing political struggles around access, power, and normalization. New directions in Disability Studies include questions of ethics and interdependence, global and local disparities in health and illness, human-animal boundaries, and intersections of disability justice with race, gender, sexuality, age, and other embodied forms of power.
Courses Associated with the Cluster
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| AMST174 | Popular Culture and Social Justice: An Introduction to American Studies | 1 |
| AMST201 | Queer Theories: Junior Colloquium | 1 |
| AMST203 | Biopolitics, Animality, and Posthumanism: Junior Colloquium | 1 |
| AMST208 | Visual Culture Studies and Violence: Junior Colloquium | 1 |
| AMST256 | Race and Medicine in America | 1 |
| AMST353 | Health, Illness, and Power in America | 1 |
| BIOL345 | Developmental Neurobiology | 1 |
| COL238 | Animal Theories/Human Fictions | 1 |
| FGSS329 | Waiting: Bodies, Time, Necropolitics | 1 |
| LANG290 | Intermediate American Sign Language I | 1 |
| NS&B360 | Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis in Health and Disease: Molecules, Cells, and Circuits | 1 |
| PSYC228 | Clinical Neuropsychology | 1 |
| SOC399L | Advanced Research Seminar: The Social Body | 1 |
Resources and Links
Wesleyan University Links
- Wesleyan Students for Disability Rights (WSDR)
- Resources for Student Accessibility Services
- Faculty Guide to Accessibility Services
- Graduate Student Guide to Accessibility Services
- Accessible Pathways and Parking Map
Disability Studies Links
Organizations
- The Society for Disability Studies (SDS)
- Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD)
- International research unit in Disability Studies (iDiS)
- World Institute on Disability (WID)
- Disability History Association (DHA)
- Centre for Culture & Disability Studies
Journals
- Disability Studies Quarterly
- Disability & Society
- Journal of Disability Policy Studies
- The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal
- Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
Other Resources:
- Academic Programs in Disability Studies
- Disability Studies at Syracuse University
- Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds
- The Institute on Disabilities at Temple University
- Annotated Disability Studies Bibliography
- Disability History Online Museum
- H-Disability email list
- Disability-Research email list
History
Wesleyan's Course Cluster in Disability Studies was a student-led initiative. In 2010, two students active in Wesleyan Students for Disability Rights (WSDR), Ariel Schwartz and Allegra Stout, approached Professor Margot Weiss to discuss strategies for increasing Disability Studies offerings at Wesleyan (see the WSDR 2010 statement of needs and goals here). Working with faculty in American Studies, Anthropology, English, FGSS, History, and SISP, Prof. Weiss proposed a Course Cluster in Disability Studies to the Wesleyan faculty in late 2010. The Cluster became part of Wesleyan's curriculum in April 2011 (see Argus coverage here).
In 2014, Schwartz and Stout published a research article, "'It'll Grow Organically and Naturally': The Reciprocal Relationship between Student Groups and Disability Studies on College Campuses," in Disability Studies Quarterly. The article explores the role student activism can play in developing disability studies on campus.