Fall 2004

Rackham 580:  Topics in Disability Studies  

Guidelines for writing about disability:
http://www.lsi.ku.edu/lsi/internal/guidelines.html

ADA Statement

It is our intention to support the full participation of all students in the learning process of this class.  We have incorporated a variety of instruction techniques and evaluation methods in the course process.  In spite of these efforts, situations may occur in which the learning style of individual students is not met by the instructional climate.  It is our expectation that students who require specific or additional support to acquire the course content or demonstrate their achievement of the objectives will inform us of their needs immediately. For UM-Ann Arbor, please contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, G664 Haven Hall, at 763-3000.   For UM-Flint, Ms. Paula Pollander is available in the office of Accessibility Services in 264 UCEN at 762-3456 to provide direct assistance.

Course Description

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to disability studies, including focus on the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and professional schools. Some topics include the history and cultural representation of disability, advocacy, health, rehabilitation, built environment, independent living, public policy. The point of departure of the course is the idea that disability provides a critical framework that reorients the basic assumptions of various fields of knowledge, from political science to architecture, from engineering to art history, from genetics to law, from public policy to education, from biology to poetry, and so on. Disability Studies views people with disabilities not as objects but as producers of knowledge whose common history has generated a wide variety of art, music, literature, and science infused with the experience of disability. Students will have the opportunity to interact with visiting speakers from a broad range of fields. The course is offered for 1 or 3 credits. Accessible classroom with realtime captioning. For more information, please contact Kristine Mulhorn and Tobin Siebers.

Learning Objectives

The course will prepare the student

• to understand how disability is culturally represented, historically and currently

• to understand how disability is addressed in the natural, social, and human sciences

• to understand how historical events have informed public policy

Students should be able to describe the implications of various conceptualizations of disability, including the implications for how persons with disabilities

• experience employment and medical care

• participate in social and political activities

• view the built environment and transportation issues

Students will also be able to describe formal models of disability, such as the medical model, the sociological model (or minority model), business model, and others.

Course Schedule (click on topic for RealAudio file)

Sept. 10    Review of Syllabus, Introduction, and Background.Film: Vital Signs

Sept. 17    What is Disability?   Medical,Social, and Business Models. Readings: Linton; Albrecht; WHO  

Sept. 24    Disability and the Built Environment. Readings: C. Davis; Imrie; Story

Oct. 1       Images of Disability Identity. Film:   When Billy Broke His Head . Readings: Braddock; Weitz

Oct. 8       The Independent Living Movement and Disability Rights.   Guest Speakers:   Peg Ball and Jim Magyar. Reading: Johnson

Oct. 15     PublicPolicy and Disability, ADA and Other Legal Issues. Guest Speaker:  Jack Bernard. Readings: Pfeiffer; Shapiro

Oct. 22     Review Session by Students

Oct. 29     Deaf Culture: Identity, History, and Other Issues. Guest Speaker: Carol Padden. Reading: Padden

Nov. 5       Disability and the Humanities. Readings: Mairs, Mitchell

Nov.12     Race and Mental Disability. Guest Speaker: Jonathan Metzl. Readings:  Brody (1966); Brody (1961); Bromberg; DSM; Stuart; Watson

Nov. 19     Living with a Disability. Guest Speakers:   Nan Asher, Peg Ball, Rob Benninger, Paul Cartman. Readings: Charlton; Phillips

Nov. 26     Thanksgiving  NO CLASS

Dec. 3       Disability and Eugenics. Guest Speaker: Martin Pernick. Readings:   Pernick

Dec. 10     Disability Culture: Sociological Implications. Readings:   Shakespeare.   Final

Project or Paper Due

Requirements: 1 credit: attendance and a paragraph summary of each class session; 3 credits: attendance, participation, class project or paper

Required Readings   (Coursepack available at Kolossos, 310 East Washington Street)

Albrecht, Gary. "The Social Meaning of Impairment and Interpretation of Disability." The Disability Business: Rehabilitation in America. Newbury Park, Calif. : Sage Publications, 1992. Pp. 67-90.

Braddock, David L. and Susan L. Parish. "An Institutional History of Disability." Handbook of Disability Studies. Ed. Gary L. Albrecht, Katherine D. Seelman,   and Michael Bury. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001. Pp. 11-68.

Brody, Eugene B. "Cultural Exclusion, Character and Illness." American Journal of Psychiatry 122.8 (1966): 852-58.

_____. "Social Conflict and Schizophrenic Behavior in Young Adult Negro Males." Psychiatry 24.4 (1961): 337-36.

Bromberg, Walter. "The 'Protest' Psychosis: A Special Type of Reactive Psychosis."  Archives of General Psychiatry 19 (1968): 155-60.

Charlton, James I. Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Pp. 3-17.

Davis, Cheryl. "Disability and the Experience of Architecture." Rethinking   Architecture: Design Students and Physically Disabled People. Ed. Raymond   Lifchez. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp. 19-33.

_____.             Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1952, 1968, 1980. [Selections]

Imrie, Rob. "Oppression, Disability and Access in the Built Environment." The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives. Ed. Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Cassell, 1998. Pp. 129-46.

Johnson, Harriet McBryde. "The Disability Gulag." New York Times Magazine, 23 November 2003. Pp. 58-64.

Linton, Simi, Susan Mello, and John O'Neill. "Disability Studies: Expanding the Parameters of Diversity." Radical Teacher 47 (1994): 32-39.

Mairs, Nancy. "Sex and the Gimpy Girl." River Teeth 1.1 (1999): 44-51.

Mitchell, David T. "Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor." Disability Studies: Enabling the  Humanities. Ed. Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. New York: MLA, 2002. Pp. 15-30.

Padden, Carol A. "The Decline of Deaf Clubs in the US: A Treatise on the Problem of Place." Unpublished. Pp. 1-18

Pernick, Martin. "Defining the Defective:   Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Mass Culture in Early 20th-Century-America." The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Ed. David T. Mitchell and Sharon Snyder. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Pp. 89-110.

Pfeiffer, David. "Overview of the Disability Movement: History, Legislative Record, and Political Implications." Policy Studies Journal 21.4 (1993): 724-34.

Phillips, Marilynn J. "Try Harder: The Experience of Disability and the Dilemma of Normalization." Social Science Journal 22.4 (1985): 45-57.

Shakespeare, Tom. "Disability, Identity, Difference." Exploring the Divide: Illness and Disability. Ed. Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer. Leeds: Disability Press, 1996). Pp. 94-113.

Shapiro, Joseph. "Disability Policy and the Media: A Stealth Civil Rights Movement Bypasses the Press and Defies Conventional Wisdom." Policy Studies Journal 22.1 (1994): 123-32.

Story, Molly Follete, James L. Mueller, and Ronald L. Mace. "Understanding the Spectrum of Human Abilities." The Universal Design File: Designing for People of All Ages and Abilities. North Carolina: Center for Universal Design, 1998. Pp. 15-30.

Stuart, Heather L. and Julio E. Arboleda-Flórez. "A Public Health Perspective on Violent Offenses Among Persons With Mental Illness." Psychiatric Services 52.5 (2001): 654-59.

Watson, Amy C. and Patrick W. Corrigan, Victor Ottati. "Police Officers' Attitudes Toward and Decisions About Persons With Mental Illness." Psychiatric Services 55.1 (2004): 49-53.

Weitz, R. The Sociology of Health, Illness and Health Care.   Belmont, California:  Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2001. Pp. 147-82.

WHO. Towards a Common Language for Functioning, Disability and Health:   ICF. Geneva, Switzerland: World Heath Organization, 2002. Pp.1-19.