Disability Studies

Students will be able to identify theories and approaches to disability as these intersect with gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, race, religion, indigeneity, colonialism, and other social forces.

Students will be able to use disability and other theories of identity and injustice to evaluate how ableism, racism, sexism, and other social forces construct our worlds and to reveal power inequities within them.

Students will be able to understand the history of disability and related social movements, connect social movements of the past with those of the present, and articulate the theoretical implications of both.

Students will develop information literacy, assessing and evaluating the validity, reliability, and appropriateness of sources, including attending to the knowledge and perspectives of disabled people

Students will cogently synthesize, employ, and communicate theories and key concepts related to disability in analytical essays, creative projects, and research papers.

Students will communicate effectively and accessibly in written, oral, and online formats in an audience-appropriate manner.

Students will use knowledge of the historic and contemporary role and differential effects of ableism and disability on local and global systems to develop or advocate for informed action to solve complex problems in society.

Students will be able to identify their own cultural patterns and values in relation to disability, understanding how they shape attitudes to difference and relationships to power.

Students will be able to engage ethically with others in class and in the larger community; they will attend to and be accountable to diverse ways of being, thinking, seeing, and acting; and they will understand their positionality within interdependent communities.