English 203

Other Readings and Media

Course Reader

Description

Disability Studies as it has emerged in the academy in the last decade is a multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary field. For complex historical reasons themselves worth exploring, in the United States that field has had particularly strong anchoring in the arts and humanities. This course will explore the meanings of �disability,� of �theory,� of �art� and of �the humanities� by considering each term in its relation to each others. Our conversations and readings will be determined to a significant extent by students� own research interests (but that doesn�t mean I presuppose any knowledge of disability issues), and also by the current interests of some of the foundational shapers of the field from across the country who will join us as guests. They will include a number of literary critics, scholars in deaf studies and performance studies, historians, legal scholars, and artists and photographers.