Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores social, political, cultural, and economic factors that shape disability; considers the ways disability is understood and constructed across different historical moments, cultures, and nations; examines the intersectional relationships amongst disability, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality; and foregrounds the experiences and perspectives of activists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. The Disability Studies program attunes students to varied ways of thinking, communicating and moving through the world.

The Disability Studies minor provides an interdisciplinary learning experience about key disability issues while also attuning you to varied ways of thinking, communicating and moving through the world. Cultural ideals of beauty, youth, fitness, strength, sex appeal, social skill, mental acuity and “health” all rely on norms of ablebodiedness, heterosexuality and whiteness. Thus, we approach disability not as fixed or singular category, but as a fluid, historically shifting, culturally specific formation that intersects with race, class, gender, language and nation. Together we will work together to crip — or disturb — contemporary epistemologies of disability.