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CCHU9092 - Disabling Society
Instructor(s)
Professor Don Kulick
Semester
2024-2025 First Semester
Credits
6.00
Contact Hours per week
3
Form of Assessment
100% coursework
Prerequisite
None. This is a Common Core course, under the 'Humanities' Area of Inquiry.

This course will introduce you to the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies. It is about how physical, intellectual, and psychiatric variations among human beings become “disabilities” that result in prejudice and discrimination, but also, sometimes, accommodation and care. 

The course will lay the groundwork for a critical approach to how understandings about and practices associated with disabled people have changed over time and continue to be modified; how such understandings and practices vary cross-culturally; the consequences of language and labelling in relation to disablement; and how disability and disabled people are represented in popular culture, academic literature, and activism. 

The course will facilitate your awareness about how social attitudes, policies and practices disable certain individuals. It will highlight the consequences of those disabling processes, both for the people most directly affected by them and for society as a whole.

learning outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

  • Develop an understanding of historical and contemporary theories and ideas about disability and processes of disablement, about ethics and responsibility, and about the role that language plays in that engagement.
  • Learn to evaluate how different forms of impairment impact on different individuals in different ways, and how cultural perceptions and social structures influence that impact.
  • Develop the ability to discuss and analyse how the meanings of disability have changed and continue to change: i) the way people with impairments are regarded and treated; ii) how political activism has and continues to change how disability is regarded and treated; and iii) the meaning and role of ethics and ethical engagement.
  • Develop confidence in deploying the elements of good analysis, including: i) identifying a problem; ii) making a defensible claim; iii) supporting a claim with evidence; iv) articulating the assumptions and inferences that link evidence to a claim; and v) providing a motive for their argument.
  • Develop their own writing and presentation style and organization, achieving coherence and clarity of argument, and build skills in the different modes of oral and written argumentation and analysis, including: i) close reading for argument, ii) research arguments and analysis; and iii) reflective thinking and cultural criticism.

 

assessment

1. Participation in classroom activities (30%):

Students will be called on to summarize arguments in the literature and to respond to comments and questions by others. 

2. First paper (25%):

1500 words. Students identify what they learned about disability in Hong Kong that they didn’t know before, and reflect on that. 

3. Second paper (25%):

1500 words. Students visit analyze media material in relation to course readings.

4. Group presentation (20%):

10 mins. This group presentation will focus on some dimension of the topics covered during the course. It can be a live presentation, a video or something else that the instructor agrees to in advance of the presentation. 

texts

Weekly critical readings:  

  1. Goffman, Irving 1968. Stigma. Penguin, Harmondsworth (selections).  

  1. Sjöström, Stefan 2017. Labelling theory. In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health, edited by Bruce M. Z. Cohen, London: Routledge, 15-23.  

  1. Gottlieb, Nanette 2001. Language and Disability in Japan, Disability & Society, 16:7, 981-1995, DOI: 10.1080/09687590120097863  

  1. Brocco, Giorgio 2015. Labeling albinism: language and discourse surrounding people with albinism in Tanzania, Disability & Society, 30:8, 1143-1157, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2015.1075869  

  1. Kailes, June Isaacson 2010. “Language is More Than a Trivial Concern!”, 10th edition. Harris Family Center for Disability and Health Policy. https://www.resourcesforintegratedcare.com/sites/default/files/Language%20Is%20More%20Than%20A%20Trivial%20Concern.pdf  

  1. Archibald, Lisa 2021. Mad in America: the language we use reflects our desire for change. https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/09/mad-activists-langauge/  

  1. Kulick, Don 2022. Butler and Political (In)Correctness. In Philosophy on Fieldwork: Critical Introductions to Theory and Analysis in Anthropological Practice, edited by Nils Bubandt and Thomas Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Routledge, pp. 118-137.  

  1. Qu, Yuanyuan 2020. Understanding the body and disability in Chinese contexts, Disability & Society, 35:5, 738 759, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2019.1649123  

  1. Schweik, Susan 2009. The Ugly Laws: disability in public. New York: New York University Press, Introduction, pp. 1-20.  

  1. Bogdan, Robert 1996. The Social Construction of Freaks In Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, edited by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, New York: NYU Press, 23-37.  

  1. Trent, James 2017. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parts of chapter 7, “The Remaking of Intellectual”  

  1. Heumann, Judith and Kristen Joiner 2020. Being Heumann: an unrepentant memoir of a disability rights activist. New York: Penguin (selections).  

  1. Barnes, Colin (2020) Understanding the Social Model of Disability: Past, Present and Future in Routledge Handbook of Disability studies, edited by Nicholas Watson and Simo Vehmas. London: Routledge, 14-31.  

  1. Thomas, C., 2004. How is disability understood? An examination of sociological approaches. Disability & society, 19(6), pp.569-583.  

  1. Shakespeare Tom (2014) Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited (selections).  

  1. White, Kevin 2017. The social construction of mental illness. In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health, edited by Bruce M. Z. Cohen, London: Routledge, 24-30.  

  1. Goodley Dan Dis/entangling Critical Disability Studies1. Culture-Theory-Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies. 2017;10:81.  

  1. Shakespeare Tom and Watson Nicholas (2001) The Social Model of Disability: An outdated ideology? Exploring Theories and Expanding Methodologies: Research in Social Science and Disability 2, 9-28  

  1. Shakespeare Tom and Watson Nicholas (2022) Frameworks, models, theories, and experiences for understanding disability. In: Brown, R., Maroto, M. and Pettinicchio, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability. Oxford University Press.  

  1. Evans B. How autism became autism: The radical transformation of a central concept of child development in Britain. Hist Human Sci. 2013 Jul 26(3): 3-31. doi: 10.1177/0952695113484320. PMID: 24014081; PMCID: PMC3757918.  

  1. Monique Botha, Bridget Dibb & David M. Frost 2022. “Autism is me”: an investigation of how autistic individuals make sense of autism and stigma, Disability & Society, 37:3, 427-453, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2020.1822782  

  1. Grandin, Temple and Catherine Johnson 2005. Animals in Translation: the woman who thinks like a cow. London: Bloomsbury. (selections).  

  1. Rachel Gorman and Brenda A. LeFrançois 2017. Mad studies. In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health, edited by Bruce M. Z. Cohen, London: Routledge, 107-113.  

  1. Kulick Don & Jens Rydström 2015. Loneliness and its Opposite: sex, disability and the ethics of engagement,. Durham & London: Duke University Press (selections).  

  1. Young, Stella 2014. I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much. https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much  

  1. Knapp, Gwen 2021. Among Paralympians, A Lively Conversation About 'Inspiration Porn'. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/05/sports/olympics/inspiration-porn-paralympians-know-it-when-they-see-it.html  

  1. Pulrang, Andrew 2019. How To Avoid “Inspiration Porn”. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2019/11/29/how-to-avoid-inspiration-porn/?sh=4483cdc25b3d  

  1. Kulick, Don The line between “laughing with” and “laughing at” people with disabilities: Love on the Spectrum and Derek.  

  1. Reeve, Cristopher 1999. Still Me. Ballantine Books (selections).  

  1. Brown, Steven 1996. Super Duper? The (Unfortunate) Ascendancy of Christopher Reeve https://www.independentliving.org/docs3/brown96c.html  

  1. Christopher Reeve is was an asshole http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=creeve  

  1. Peace, William 2012. The Reeve school of paralysis. http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2012/02/reeve-school-of-paralysis.html  

  1. Shakespeare, Tom 2004. Christopher Reeve: you'll believe a man can walk http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/christopher-reeve-you-ll-believe-a-man-can-walk.shtml  

  1. Allirajah, Duleep 2013. Oscar Pistorius: when good metaphors turn bad. https://www.spiked-online.com/2013/02/28/oscar-pistorius-when-good-metaphors-turn-bad/  

  1. Peace, William 2013. Oscar Pistorius, Helen Keller and the problem with role models. http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2013/02/oscar-pistorius-helen-keller-and.html  

  1. Lauterman, Sara 2021. The Ignominious Deceits of Congressman Cawthorn https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/madison-cawthorn-paralympics/  

  1. Mohamed, Kharnita and Tamara Shefer 2015. Gendering disability and disabling gender: Critical reflections on intersections of gender and disability Agenda, Vol. 29, No. 2 (104), pp. 2-13.  

  1. McRuer, Robert 2006. Crip theory: cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: NYU Press (selections).  

  1. Taylor, Sunaura 2017. Beasts of Burden: animal and disability liberation. New York: The New Press (selections). 

Required Viewing 

Browning, Todd (director), 1932. Freaks.  

James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham (directors), 2020. Crip Camp. 


Instructor(s)
Professor Don Kulick
Semester
2024-2025 First Semester
Credits
6.00
Contact Hours per week
3
Form of Assessment
100% coursework
Prerequisite
None. This is a Common Core course, under the 'Humanities' Area of Inquiry.