Guide to Embedding Disability Studies into the Humanities
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- Navigate this page:
- What is Disability Studies
- Some Important Facts to Set the Context
- Like other marginalized groups, people with Disabilities have been …
- Disability as Diversity Like people of color, women, and other cultural groups …
- We hope this Guide is a useful resource to you and your colleagues as you embed disability studies content into the humanities.
- Temple University May 2011
- Not for distribution without the permission of the Editors.
A Guide to Embedding Disability Studies into the HumanitiesWelcome and IntroductionWelcome to A Guide to Embedding Disability Studies into the Humanities. This Guide is one outcome of 3 years of Disability Studies faculty working with Humanities faculty at Temple University to enrich and broaden the curriculum and instruction of Mosaic, a 2- semester humanities course required of all undergraduate and transfer students. Because disability will be treated as an important aspect of human diversity in this course, an expected outcome is that students with disabilities will find the academy as not only an accessible place to study but also a welcoming place to study, thus improving their retention rates at their colleges and universities. This Guide has been funded through a demonstration project grant from the US Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education, PR/Award #: P333A080018. You can learn more about the overall program Ensuring Higher Education Opportunity for ALL by visiting our website http://disabilities.temple.edu/programs/ds/higherEd.shtml The purpose of this guidebook is two-fold. The first purpose is to share with academic colleagues in the United States and abroad successful attempts at embedding Disability Studies content into the humanities. At Temple University, we collaborated with faculty members teaching a two-semester, “world civilizations” course called “Mosaic: The Humanities Seminars,” required of all freshmen and transfer students. Members of our Interdisciplinary Faculty Committee, all of whom have expertise in Disability Studies and most of whom self-identify as a person with a disability or chronic illness, prepared and delivered lectures on such topics as race and disability, medical testing on disabled populations, images of disability in the Holy Bible, disability and education, and female sexuality and disability. In all cases, IFC members collaborated with their Mosaic faculty partners, ensuring that the lectures they delivered would be relevant and useful in the context of what had already been discussed in the Mosaic classroom. You can view a short video introducing you to some of the faculty by clicking on http://disabilities.temple.edu/programs/ds/hEd2capacity.shtmlThe second purpose of this guidebook is to offer a heuristic for incorporating Disability Studies concepts and content into a variety of academic disciplines within the humanities. By bringing the voices of the disability community into discipline-based content areas, faculty can expand the scope of their current offerings while simultaneously supporting students with disabilities at the post-secondary level by allowing them to see themselves and their experiences reflected in the undergraduate curriculum. Speaking of the impact of the project on his students, Mosaic instructor Jamal Benin reports, “I feel that this is really necessary. It’s fun, the students welcome it, and they learn so much because they don’t know anything about it.” Additionally, since the experience of disability has social, historical, literary and religious contexts, it is our aim to help you to draw out the parallels between non-disabled lives and their disabled counterparts as you ask students to explore particular academic disciplines.What is Disability Studies?Like women’s studies and African American studies, Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study which is focused on the contributions, experiences, history, and culture of people with disabilities. The field of teaching and research in the area of Disability Studies is growing worldwide. The Society for Disability Studies, an international organization founded in 1982 to promote discussion and dissemination of disability studies, publishes the Disability Studies Quarterly, the leading journal devoted to the field of Disability Studies. The Modern Language Association started a Disability Studies Discussion Group in 1993 by member petition, and expanded to Division status in 2006.According to The Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, Disability Studies refers generally to the examination of disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. In contrast to clinical, medical, or therapeutic perspectives on disability, Disability Studies focuses on how disability is defined and represented in society. It rejects the perception of disability as a functional impairment that limits a person’s activities. From this perspective, disability is not a characteristic that exists in the person or a problem of the person that must be “fixed” or “cured.” Instead, disability is a construct that finds its meaning within a social and cultural context.For a further examination of the rationale and need for Disability Studies, see Diane N. Bryen and Sieglinde A. Shapiro, "Disability Studies: What it is and Why it is Needed," an article from the Temple University Faculty Herald 25(4), February 12, 1996.Literary studies scholar Joshua Lukin discusses work examining the complex interactions between representations of disability and race in historical and contemporary American society - "Black Disability Studies," Temple University Faculty Herald 36(4), February 14, 2006.Some Important Facts to Set the ContextBetween 600 and 650 million people with disabilities worldwide 54 million Americans with Disabilities Disability does not equate to disease or illness The voices of people with disabilities have been largely absent in the education of students in the humanities
Devalued and marginalized Discriminated against and segregated Sterilized, subjected to euthanasia, and exterminated Poorly educated with high rates of school drop out Disability is both a cause and consequence of income poverty Denied access to quality healthcare and education Intersect with other minority groups, such as race, gender, and other cultural groups YET, like other minority groups, the disability communities have a long and rich history unknown to many
Disability Studies content needs to be embedded into: History Literature and Writing Film and other Media Religion
Political science and economics Sociology Anthropology Architecture Engineering Computer Science, City Planning, and much more…
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