MAIS658

Introduction

MAIS 658: Doing Disability Differently examines disability as a social, cultural, political, and experiential phenomenon from which issues of social equality and justice emerge. The course invites a critical examination of disability while exploring how disability can teach us about the culture within which we live.

First we will consider definitions of disability and ask who defines disability—and for what purposes—and who defines themselves as disabled. We will also consider the terms to use when communicating about disability.

The first section of the course explores how clinical, medical, and therapeutic approaches are authorized to create categories of disability for subsequent treatment, alteration, and prognosis, often without taking into account the lived experiences of those who have been categorized. This approach locates the “problem” of disability within the individual and understands the cause of disability within functional limitations or psychological losses of the individual (Oliver 1996). This section also considers how the medical or individual model of disability regards disability as a personal tragedy and also examines societal responses to “solve the problem” of disability, such as pity and charity, genetic testing, “wrongful birth,” euthanasia, abortion, and sterilization.

The second section explores the implications of making a distinction between impairment and disability. The social model of disability acknowledges the often profound physical and psychical effects of impairment on individuals, but it regards disability as a social problem rather than an individual problem. According to the social model, disability is the disadvantage caused by social organization, and disabled people are an oppressed group.

We then turn to the question of what is demanded of society when disabled people are recognized as an oppressed group and to a consideration of how disability is complicated by other axes of difference such as gender and ethnicity. This section also examines how disability and caregiving might be understood, experienced, and looked after differently if interdependence is recognized as central to all human relationships.

The third section of the course considers the cultural model of disability, which foregrounds disability as a way that a culture can learn about taken-for-granted norms and procedures. In the cultural model, disability functions not as abnormality but as a diagnosis of culture.

The last section of the course takes up the cultural model of disability in order to explore possibilities for doing disability differently. This can include various types of performance art, including disability humour, but also involves different ways of portraying disability in newspapers and other mainstream communications.

Course Objectives

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• understand various historical and contemporary approaches to disability
• appreciate debates about who is counted among the disabled and why
• recognize how far reaching the impulse to normalize is, including the use of such eugenic practices as institutionalization, genetic testing, and euthanasia
• understand how social and physical environments disable people with impairments
• recognize the political importance of understanding disabled people as an oppressed group
• realize that disabled people are not a homogeneous group and that disability is confounded by other axes of difference
• appreciate how disability can expose taken-for-granted norms of a culture and, in doing so, be a perspective for learning
• recognize opportunities to take up disability as a diagnosis of culture in your engagement with media and other representations and, in doing, so, “do disability differently”

Student Evaluation

To receive credit for this course, students must participate in the online activities, successfully complete the assignments, and achieve a final mark of at least 60 per cent. Students should be familiar with the Master of Arts—Integrated Studies grading system. Please note that it is students' responsibility to maintain their program status. Any student who receives a grade of "F" in one course, or a grade of "C" in more than one course, may be required to withdraw from the program.

The following table summarizes the evaluation activities and the credit weights associated with them.