IDIS 1002 - Introduction to Disability Studies

3 cr. 3 hr. Offered once per calendar year

This course will focus on disability within a social, cultural and historical context with an emphasis on how disability is and has been defined and understood on both a micro and macro level. The course will explore models of disability that seek to explain and represent experience, along with the ethical issues and implications of these models. The course will also introduce students to a theoretical and methodological approach to the examination of disability emphasizing disability as a social construction rather than a condition of medical or biological deficiency. Students will be encouraged to increase their ethical awareness of the complexity of the biological deficiency. Students will be encouraged to increase their ethical awareness of the complexity of the disability as a concept through in-depth examination fo stigma, discrimination, individual and social representation of disability, models of disability and other psychosocial considerations. A strong emphasis will also be placed on understanding disability from a variety fo cultural perspectives and assessing the impact of racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and socio-political factors on disability status. CTW, GDC