Evolving Syllabus

CRITICAL DISABILITY STUDIES:  THEORY AND PRACTICE

 

Health Studies 304, Spring 2022

Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:30-4:00 PM

Union 224 MacCrate

Prof. Kristin Lindgren

Email: klindgre@haverford.edu

                                             

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course, students engage with recent work in critical disability studies across a range of humanistic disciplines, including literary studies, visual studies, history, and philosophy. Drawing on these varied disciplinary perspectives, we explore how disability theory, disability justice, and engaged community practice inform and shape one another. Along the way, we discuss the historical and theoretical development of the ideas of normalcy and disability; questions around ethical engagement and inclusive design; the growth of disability arts and culture; and the relationship between disability, access, and exhibition practices. In non-pandemic times, the course includes a semester-long project in partnership with the Center for Creative Works (CCW), a studio and teaching space in Wynnewood, PA, for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We hope to be able to engage in some sessions with CCW artists in the second half of this semester.

LEARNING STYLES AND ACCESSIBILITY

I invite you to talk with me early in the semester about how you learn best and how we can make our classroom and class projects as accessible and generative for you and others as possible. If you would like to request accommodations in this course, please meet with Sherrie Borowsky (sborowsky@haverford.edu), Director of the Office of Access and Disability Services, or with the coordinator of your campus’s office. As a class, we will try to enact principles of universal design. Let’s create a more inclusive and accessible world!

College Statement:

I am committed to partnering with you on your academic and intellectual journey. I also recognize that your ability to thrive academically can be impacted by your personal well-being and that stressors may impact you over the course of the semester. If the stressors are academic, I welcome the opportunity to discuss and address those stressors with you in order to find solutions together.  If you are experiencing challenges or questions related to emotional health, finances, physical health, relationships, learning strategies or differences, or other potential stressors, I hope you will consider reaching out to the many resources available on campus. These resources include CAPS (free and unlimited counseling is available), the Office of Academic Resources, Health Services, Professional Health Advocate, Religious and Spiritual Life, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the GRASE Center, and the Dean’s Office. Additional information can be found at https://www.haverford.edu/deans-office-student-life/offices-resources.

Additionally, Haverford College is committed to creating a learning environment that meets the needs of its diverse student body and providing equal access to students with a disability. If you have (or think you have) a learning difference or disability – including mental health, medical, or physical impairment – please contact the Office of Access and Disability Services (ADS) at hc-ads@haverford.edu. The Director will confidentially discuss the process to establish reasonable accommodations.  It is never too late to request accommodations – our bodies and circumstances are continuously changing.

Students who have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and want to use their accommodations in this course should share their accommodation letter and make arrangements to meet with me as soon as possible to discuss how their accommodations will be implemented in this course. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and require advance notice in order to successfully implement. If, at any point in the semester, a disability or personal circumstances affect your learning in this course or if there are ways in which the overall structure of the course and general classroom interactions could be adapted to facilitate full participation, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. 

It is a state law in Pennsylvania that individuals must be given advance notice that they may be recorded. Therefore, any student who has a disability-related need to audio record this class must first be approved for this accommodation from the Director of Access and Disability Services and then must speak to me. Other class members need to be aware that this class may be recorded.

 

COURSE MATERIALS

Most readings for the course will be made available as pdf's on our course web platform, Serendip. We will also be using portions of the following books. The only one we will read in full, and thus the only one you need to buy or borrow, is Good Kings, Bad Kings. There is an excellent audiobook version if you prefer to listen.

Eli Clare, Exile and Pride (e-book available via Tripod)

Lennard J. Davis, ed. The Disability Studies Reader (e-book available via Tripod)

Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl (pdfs of individual chapters provided)

Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (e-book available via Tripod)

Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings, Bad Kings (e-book available via Tripod)

 

COURSE EXPECTATIONS

I expect us to create, collectively, an inclusive learning community in which each one of us can teach and learn joyfully and effectively. To this end, I ask for your attentive presence in our classroom, our online course space Serendip, and in our CCW partnership (if COVID guidelines enable us to collaborate with them). Assignments include eight Serendip posts over the semester, a mid-semester project, a final project.

SERENDIP POSTINGS

I will ask you to post on Serendip eight weeks out of the fourteen weeks of the semester. Some weeks there will be a specific prompt; some weeks not. I will add prompts as we go. You can post a reflection on course material or on an event, article, film, etc. that is related to our course material. (You are also very welcome to post links to anything interesting, but it doesn’t count as one of your eight posts unless you add a reflection).  A full and thoughtful response to someone else's posting also counts as a response, and some weeks I will ask you to do this. So: I would like you to post at least eight times on Serendip over the semester (your mid-term and final projects will bring this to ten) but your postings can take a variety of forms. I welcome your ideas about how we can engage on Serendip effectively as a class. At the end of the semester, part of your "portfolio" will consist of an e-portfolio of all your Serendip postings plus your mid-semester and end-of-semester projects posted on Serendip.

PORTFOLIO GRADING

I use a portfolio grading process, in which I ask you to submit a portfolio of your work at the end of the semester. The portfolio will include your mid-semester and final projects, your Serendip posts, and a checklist of the work for the course. I will also ask for a two-to-three page informal reflection on your learning in the course. You will receive individual grades on your mid-semester project, your final project, and your course engagement (in class, on Serendip, and potentially with CCW). Your final course grade will be holistic, based on these three grades and your portfolio as a whole. Please feel free to talk to me if you have questions or concerns about grading

COURSE SCHEDULE

 

WEEK ONE: INTRODUCING OURSELVES AND THE COURSE

 

January 18     

Introductions and overview of the course

Brainstorming class community guidelines and access practices

 

January 20     

Simi Linton, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity: Read the foreword by Michael Bérubé; Chapter 1, "Reclamation;” and Chapter 2, "Reassigning Meaning" (pdf, 37 pages in all)

James Robinson, I Have A Visual Disability, and I Want You to Look Me in the Eye (12 min)

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Becoming Disabled” (4 pages)

Neil Marcus, “Disabled Country” (pdf, 1 page)

Serendip: Create a username and upload an image

           

WEEK TWO:  DISABILITY JUSTICE, ABLEISM, AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS

 

January 25      

Sins Invalid, Ten Principles of Disability Justice (image and list)

Sins Invalid and Patty Berne, Ten Principles Explained

Mia Mingus, Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice (5 pages)

TL Lewis, “Disability Justice is An Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons” (5 pages)

Elliott Fukui, Intersections of Disability Justice and Transformative Justice (4 minutes)

           

January 27        

Elliot Kukla, "My Life is More 'Disposable' During this Pandemic" (2 pages)

Alice Wong, "Am I Expendable During this Pandemic?" (2 pages)

Riva Lehrer, The Virus Has Stolen Your Face from Me (3 pages)

Katie Savin and Laura Guidry-Grimes, "Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic" (5 pages)

Alternatives for those who have already read these pieces: listen to and/or read the transcript of one of the Contra* podcasts about disability and COVID-19: Aimi Hamraie with Alice Wong (22 min), Arrianna Planey (34 min), or Jay Dolmage (26 min)

Serendip: Write a response to one (or more) of the short essays we read this week, or a reflection on how the ongoing pandemic affects disabled people with particular impairments or in particular contexts (e.g. schools, colleges, specific workplaces). Are there any positive outcomes of pandemic life for people with disabilities?

  

WEEK THREE:  HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

February 1     

Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States, introduction and chapters 1 and 2 (42 pages) (CW for the book: not a pretty history)

There are some positive stories, especially at the beginning and end of the book, but also plenty of traumatic disability history.

As you read, think about how disability was defined at different historical moments, who was charged with caring for those who needed care, and how disability intersects in different times and places with gender, race, class, citizenship status, and other identity markers.

February 3     

Lennard Davis,"Introduction: Normality, Power, and Culture" The Disability Studies Reader (DSR) (Read pages 1-8, dense reading)

Harriet McBryde Johnson, “Unspeakable Conversations,” also via pdf (pdf contains several chapters: this is chapter nine, 28 pages).

                        

WEEK FOUR: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS 

February 8     

A Disability History, chapter 6 (30 pages)     

 

February 10     

Hidden Brain podcast: Emma, Carrie, Vivian: How a Family Became a Test Case (41 minutes, and/or read the transcript).

Molly McCully Brown, "The Central Virginia Training Center" (poem, 2 pages, pdf) Brown reads this poem on the podcast.      

 

WEEK FIVE: FREAKS AND MONSTERS

February 15   

Eli Clare, Exile and Pride, “Freaks and Queers,” (pages 81-118, 37 pages)

                                                                       

February 17    Riva Lehrer, “I’m Done with the Costumes that Hid the Monster Beneath

Riva Lehrer, Jarred: Self-Portrait in Formaldehyde (27 minutes, 43 with optional Q&A)  framed by her visit to the Mütter Museum in Philly and her work in portraiture
CW: images of fetuses in jars)

Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl, excerpts (pdf)

Schedule a meeting with Kristin about mid-semester project ideas this week or next.

Begin to formulate an idea for your mid-term project.
To get started: Pick up on a thread of something that has engaged you in the reading or conversation, something that’s puzzling you, or a question you want to ask, and spend some time following that thread. One of your Serendip posts might develop into a project. Maybe there's an issue we haven't discussed in class that you'd like to explore 
We'll discuss your ideas together; you do not yet need to have a fully formed plan when we meet.

Project parameters: 

• The project's scope should be equivalent to about 5-7 pages of an analytical essay, but it can take a variety of forms.
• Discuss your topic, material & methods, and parameters of your particular project with me. 
• Bring a critical disability studies perspective to your project. You needn't simply "apply" this perspective: feel free to challenge, extend, or complicate ideas from disability studies. 
• If your project takes a narrative, artistic, or activist form, add an analytical frame or coda that reflects on its relationship to the field of disability studies. 
• Create a resource that others in the class (and beyond) can draw on. You can do this by extending a conversation we've begun in class, asking new questions, including a bibliography or other resource materials, creating an artistic or activist project that can be shared, and in many other ways.
• Consider accessibility: how can you make your project as accessible as possible?  

                         

WEEK SIX: NEURODIVERSITY AND MENTAL DISABILITY

February 22

Margaret Price, Introduction to Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (pdf) (25 pages)

Ibby Grace, Cognitively Accessible Language: Why We Should Care (1 page) 

Optional: Therí Pickens, excerpt from Introduction to Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (pdf, pages 4-8, more if you wish)

February 24   

Nick Walker (she/her), "Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms and Definitions" and Throw Away the Master’s Tools

Amythest Schaber, "What is Stimming?" (10 minutes)
If you wish, browse other videos in the Ask An Autistic series

Melanie Yergeau, "I Stim, Therefore I Am" (3 minutes)

Mel Baggs, "In My Language" (8.5 minutes) 

Optional Viewing: documentary film Deej, directed by Rob Rooy (72 minutes)
Chronicles the life history of a non-speaking autistic student and poet who attended Oberlin College

 

WEEK SEVEN: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS, MID-SEMESTER PROJECT 

March 1 and March 3

You will each have about 10 minutes for a conversation about your mid-semester project. (About 5 minutes for you to talk about your project, and another 5 minutes for discussion). This is not a formal presentation; it is an opportunity to talk about work-in-progress with your classmates. Nonetheless, you need to plan your time carefully. Please give us a sense of the main questions or ideas that motivate your project and the methods & materials you are using to explore these questions. If you are including drawings, images, film clips, or other materials, it would be great to see an example or two. Finally, tell your classmates something you're still struggling with/trying to work out, and ask for ideas and feedback.

Please upload your project to Serendip once it’s completed. Once projects are posted, I'd like you to read/view at least three of your classmates' projects. Read many more if you have time! Please post a comment on one or more, including one that no one has yet commented on.

           

SPRING BREAK

           

WEEK EIGHT: DISABILITY CULTURE IN INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS

March 15       

Nicola Griffith, Rewriting the Old Disability Script (2 pages)

Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings, Bad Kings (read about half, pages 1-166. Lots of pages, but a quick read)
(CW: physical and sexual abuse and rape, accidental death, overmedication. The novel also contains a lot of love, resilience, and crip humor).

Serendip: Anytime this week or next, read at least three of your classmate's midterm projects and comment on at least one, including one that has not yet been commented on. 

 

March 18       

Good Kings, Bad Kings (finish the novel, 294 pages in all)

Cheryl Green, In My Home (6 minute video)

Optional: Harriet McBryde Johnson, "The Disability Gulag" (6 pages)

 

WEEK NINE: DISABILITY ARTS AND CULTURE

Tours of The Center for Creative Works (CCW) this week 

March 22       

Petra Kuppers, Introduction to Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape, (Read pages 1-14, e-book available through Tripod)

Alice Sheppard, "I Dance Because I Can" (2 pages)

Alice Sheppard, Embodied Virtuosity: Dances from Disability Culture (8 minutes)

Serendip: post a response to or reflection on Petra Kuppers's questions: "What is disability culture? Is there one, are there many? Who calls culture into being?"

Continue reading and commenting on one another's projects

 

March 24       

Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, Chapter 1: "Introducing Disability Aesthetics" (Focus on pages 15-20 about Judith Scott; the rest of the chapter is optional)

Interview with Matthew Higgs and Lisa Sonneborn, "Sometimes We Need to Get Uncomfortable" (4 pages)

The next two readings will give you some context for understanding CCW as a progressive art studio: 

Disparate Minds, "Progressive Practices: The Basics" (blog post, about 4 pages)

Optional: Nathaniel Rich, "A Training Ground for Untrained Artists: Creative Growth Art Center" NYT Magazine 12/16/15 (about 8 pages)           

 

WEEK TEN: DEAF CULTURE

March 29       

View one of the following films, preferably one you haven’t seen before. I recommend organizing some small watch parties.

Sound of Metal (Amazon Prime Video), dir. Darius Marder

CODA (Apple TV+), dir. Sian Heder

Documentary film Deaf Jam (Tripod/Kanopy), dir. Judy Lieff. 

We’ll break into three groups (depending on which film you watched) to discuss each film’s representation of d/Deafness and then to “brief” one another on all three films.

 

March 31       

H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray, “Deaf Studies in the 21^st Century: ‘Deaf-Gain’ and the Future of Human Diversity, in DSR, 242-255 (9 dense pages plus notes).                       

How Architecture Changes for the Deaf (5 minutes)

Christine Sun Kim,  Closer Captions (8 minutes)

  

WEEK ELEVEN: BIOETHICAL CONUNDRUMS AND THE POLITICS OF CURE

April 5

Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, e-book available via Tripod and physical copies available in Canaday and Lutnick.
Please read: "Introduction: Writing A Mosaic" and "A Note on Reading This Book: Thinking About Trigger Warnings" (pages xv-xxi),
Chapter 1, "Ideology of Cure” (pages 5-17) and part of chapter 4, "Nuances of Cure", (pages 53-62, no need to read 63-64). The reading is 27 pages altogether. 

April 9            

Ruha Benjamin, "Interrogating Equity: A Disability Justice Approach to Genetic Engineering" (4 pages) 

Sandy Sufian & Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, The Dark Side of CRISPR (4 pages)

Sheila Black, Trying To Embrace a Cure (2 pages)

Optional: Erika Check Hayden,"Tomorrow's Children: What would genome editing really mean for future generations?" (about 4 pages)

 

Optional articles if you want to pursue these ideas further:

Keri Cronin ‘18, "Modern Eugenics: A Disability Theory Perspective on CRISPR" Serendip

Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, "Bioethics and the Deaf Community, in Signs and Voices, PDF in Reading File (11 pages) 

Shawna Benston, "CRISPR: A Crossroads in Genetic Intervention: Pitting the Right to Health against the Right to Disability"  (about 15 pages)

 

WEEK TWELVE: DISABILITY RIGHTS, DISABILITY JUSTICE; DESIGNING FOR ACCESS

April 12          

Watch the documentary film Crip Camp, dir James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham (streaming on Netflix, 1 hour 48 minutes)

Content warning: includes awful video images of disabled people incarcerated at Willowbrook State School, a notoriously abusive institution 

Reread the list of ten principles of disability justice (below) and consider what elements of disability justice you see at work at Camp Jened and in the disability rights movement, especially the Section 504 protests, decades before these principles were articulated.
Sins Invalid, Ten Principles of Disability Justice (image and list) 
Sins Invalid and Patty Berne, Ten Principles Explained

Optional/Alternative: Chapter 8 of A Disability History of the United States (25 pages)

A couple of book-length resources for any of you who want to do final projects on this topic:
Lennard J. Davis, Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disability Act Gave the Largest US Minority its Rights
Joseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

 

April 14

Critical Design Lab, browse their site and their exhibition #CripRitual

Sara Hendren, The Accessible Icon Project (An Icon Is a Verb and Notes on Design Activism) (about 8 pages with images)

Carmen Papalia, “A New Model for Access in the Museum”

Check out access guidelines and programs at the website of a museum you visit or another museum such as The Whitney, The Guggenheim, The National Portrait Gallery, or any other museum that interests you. The point is to find out what kinds of access and programming various museums offer.  

 

WEEK THIRTEEN: PREPARING FOR CCW EXHIBITION 

April 19

We'll work in class on co-writing paragraphs about CCW artists' work, to be used as wall text in the exhibition.           

 

April 21          

We'll work in class on planning for accessibility for the CCW exhibition in VCAM. (May include creating signage for VCAM, audio recordings of wall text, etc.)

 

WEEK FOURTEEN: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS, FINAL PROJECT, EXHIBITION

April 26           Workshop for CCW Exhibition 

April 28           Works-in-Progress  LAST CLASS

May 2, 3 PM     Hello, It's Me, Opening of the CCW Exhibition in the ground floor Create Space in VCAM!

In planning to workshop ideas for your final project, consider these questions:

• What are the central questions or ideas guiding your project?
• How does a disability studies framework shape your project and the questions you are asking? (Consider the difference between a project "about" disability and a project that also brings questions or perspectives from disability studies to the table) 
• What are your materials and methods? (Close reading of text, images, film clips? Interviews? Multiple media? A particular disciplinary framework? A multidisciplinary approach?)
• What would you like the rest of us to learn from your work so far? What can you share with us now, and what are you still figuring out? How can the rest of us be a resource for you as you work on your project? How can your project serve as a resource for the rest of us, and potentially for others beyond the class?      

Final project parameters: 

• The project's scope should be equivalent to about 6-8 pages of an analytical essay, but it can take a variety of for
• Bring a critical disability studies perspective to your project.  You needn't simply "apply" this perspective: feel free to challenge, extend, or complicate ideas from disability studies. 
• If your project takes a narrative or artistic form, add an analytical frame or coda that reflects on its relationship to the field of disability studies. 
• Create a resource that others in the class (and beyond) can draw on. You can do this by extending a conversation we've begun in class, asking new questions, including a bibliography or other resource materials, creating an artistic project that can be shared, creating an activist project, and in many other ways.

Final projects and portfolios due last day of the semester. For seniors: Saturday, May 7 at 5 PM; for non-seniors, Friday May 13 at 12 PM

                                          

PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS 

Below are instructions for submitting your final project, e-portfolio, and course reflection. This process invites you to look back on the work you've done over the semester and reflect on what you’ve learned. 

1. Please post your final project to Serendip.

2. Log onto our course homepage. Under “Quick Links” on the left side of the page, you will see “My E-Portfolio.” Clicking on that will call up your two projects and all of your Serendip postings. This is your “portfolio” for the semester.

3. Review your portfolio and reflect on your learning this semester (not just what appears in concrete form in your portfolio). Then, please write an informal essay (about 2-3 pages) reflecting on this learning, on where you were at the beginning of the semester and where you are now. Do you see any particular questions or themes that occupied you throughout the semester? Think about your projects and your contributions inside and outside the classroom. You can consider some of the questions below, but you do not need to answer all of them. 

How has your understanding of disability been expanded or challenged? In what contexts did learning happen for you, and how did you contribute to others’ learning?  What will you take from this course into your future courses or career and your future as a human? How did the pandemic or other events change, interfere with, or deepen your learning?

You can email your reflection to me or post it on Serendip. If you post on Serendip, tag your piece by checking the box “Self-Evaluation and Reflection." I look forward to spending some time with your portfolios and your reflections. If you have any questions whatsoever about the process, please feel free to email me.