ENGL 720-01: Introduction to Disability Studies

Section Description:

This course examines the role that disability plays in our culture. We will study the ways disability gets constructed in discourses ranging from law and policy, to film, plays, novels, memoirs, and poetry, and consider how changing conceptions of disability both ground and threaten notions of normality, identity, independence, productivity, and personhood. Some topics we will explore include disabled modernism/modernity, disability poetry and poetics; cognitive disability, dependency theory and the ethics of care; and the concept of “Deaf gain,” American Sign Language poetics, and new developments in Deaf Studies. Texts include Virginia Woolf’s *Mrs. Dalloway*, Larry Kramer’s *The Normal Heart*, poetry by Charlotte Mew, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Essex Hemphill, Hannah Weiner, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich and Alice Notley. This course participates in the Disability Studies Program event series. Students will attend lectures and performances by renowned disability theorists, advocates, and artists.