January 14, 2025 - 15:48
CRITICAL DISABILITY STUDIES: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Health Studies 304, Spring 2025
Tuesday / Thursday 2:30-4:00 PM
Hall 112
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, and history. 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. 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.
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 keely milbourne (kmilbourn1@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. We will also read a few chapters of A Disability History of the US, so you may want to buy or borrow this book as well. All books should also be on reserve or available as e-books.
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. Assignments include eight Serendip posts over the semester, a mid-semester project, and 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. If possible, write one of your posts in response to a disability-related event. 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. 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.
EVENTS
If possible, I’d like you to attend at least one disability-related event in the Tri-Co or elsewhere, including online events, and post a reflection on the event on Serendip. Describe the event for others who have not attended and offer a recommendation and/or critique. In your reflection, comment on access features or access fails at the event. Please feel free to publicize other events in class and via Serendip, and I will add more events as I learn of them. Here’s a start, with events in the Tri-Co:
Friday, January 24, 4:30 PM, ---- Swarthmore, Performance by ASL poetry duo The Flying Words Project, followed by a workshop.
Thurs, February 20 & Friday, February 21—Online, Teach Access Virtual Accessibility Workshop Registration required (free, via the website), and you can attend any portion of the workshop.
Thurs, March 20 & Friday March 21—Bryn Mawr, symposium on DeafSpace.
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 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 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 21
Introductions and overview of the course
Brainstorming class community guidelines and access practices
January 23
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,
skim parts of Ch 2 if you wish)
Sins Invalid, Ten Principles of Disability Justice (image and list)
Serendip: Create a username and upload an image
WEEK TWO: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
January 28
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. How did some of the contemporary principles of disability justice show up in these early contexts?
January 30
Lennard Davis,"Introduction: Normality, Power, and Culture" The Disability Studies Reader (DSR) (Read pages 1-8, dense reading)
Art 21: Creative Growth Art Center (13 minutes)
Disparate Minds, "Progressive Practices: The Basics" (blog post, about 4 pages)
WEEK THREE: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
February 4
A Disability History, chapter 6 (30 pages)
February 6
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 FOUR: FREAKS AND MONSTERS
February 11
Eli Clare, Exile and Pride, “Freaks and Queers,” (pages 81-118, 37 pages)
February 13
Riva Lehrer, “I’m Done with the Costumes that Hid the Monster Beneath
Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl, excerpts (pdf)
Riva Lehrer on The Mütter Museum
WEEK FIVE: DISABILITY JUSTICE, ABLEISM, AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS
February 18
Some ideas we'll explore and work to define this week: access intimacy, crip time, rest activism, plain language, disability wisdom.
Revisit the Ten Principles of Disability Justice and read the paragraph long explanations by Sins Invalid and Patty Berne: Ten Principles Explained
Mia Mingus, Access Intimacy (2 pages)
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Making Space Accessible is an Act of Love for Our Communities (3 pages, also included in her book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice)
Ibby Grace, Cognitively Accessible Language: Why We Should Care (1 page)
Jillian Crochet, Rest and the Disabled Body (about 7 pages of text, lots of images)
Elliot Kukla, “In My Chronic Illness, I Found a Deeper Meaning” (2 pages)
February 20
Julia Watts Belser, Climate Crisis Makes Us Recognize Our Limits: Disability Culture Can Show Us How (about 4 pages)
Browse Disability and Climate Change: A Public Archive Project, including plain language version
Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies, 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 25
Margaret Price, Introduction to Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (pdf) (25 pages)
Optional: Therí Pickens, excerpt from Introduction to Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (pdf, pages 4-8, more if you wish)
February 27
ASAN: About Autism
Nick Walker (she/her), "Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms and Definitions"
Amythest Schaber, "What is Stimming?" (10 minutes)
If you wish, browse other videos in the Ask An Autistic series
Mel Baggs, "In My Language" (8.5 minutes)
WEEK SEVEN: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS, MID-SEMESTER PROJECT
March 3 and March 5
You will each have about 10 minutes for a conversation about your mid-semester project. (About 5 minutes for you to talk and/or show images, 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. 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. 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 17
Nicola Griffith, Rewriting the Old Disability Script (2 pages)
Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings, Bad Kings Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings, Bad Kings, pages 1-99. It’s a quick read or listen. (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 on Serendip, including one that has not yet been commented on.
March 19
Good Kings, Bad Kings, 100-197
WEEK NINE: DISABILITY ARTS AND CULTURE, INDEPENDENT LIVING MOVEMENT
March 24
Good Kings, Bad Kings, pages 198-298 (finish the book)
March 26
Harriet McBryde Johnson, "The Disability Gulag" (6 pages)
Cheryl Green, In My Home (6 minute video)
Cheryl Green, In My Home with Audio Description (6 minute video)
WEEK TEN: DISABILITY ARTS & CULTURE
March 30
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?"
April 2
Carolyn Lazard, Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice. Read Part I: "Why Accessibility?" and browse Part II: Accommodations, as well as Parts III and IV.
Design Activism: Sara Hendren, The Accessible Icon Project (Read "An Icon Is a Verb" and "Notes on Design Activism" about 8 pages altogether including lots of images)
If you wish, 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.
WEEK ELEVEN: BIOETHICAL CONUNDRUMS AND THE POLITICS OF CURE
April 7
Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, Introduction and Chapter 1, "Ideology of Cure” (20 pages)
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)
Kristen V. Brown, Aspiring Parents Have a New DNA Test to Obsess Over (5 pages or 11-minute listen)
How do we distinguish between appropriate treatment or cure and unwanted or harmful intervention?
WEEK TWELVE: DISABILITY RIGHTS, DISABILITY JUSTICE
April 14
Watch the documentary film Crip Camp, dir James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham (streaming on Netflix, 1 hour 48 minutes) We will plan a couple of watch parties.
CW: includes brief video images of disabled people incarcerated at Willowbrook State School, a notoriously abusive institution.
Reread the list of ten principles of disability justice 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 andJoseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement
April 16
In class: Complete wall text for exhibition; work on social story and other access tasks
WEEK THIRTEEN: ACCESS AND DESIGN
April 21
Work in class on preparing for exhibition: record audio descriptions; etc.
April 23
Work in class on access practices for exhibition
WEEK FOURTEEN: WORKS-IN-PROGRESS, FINAL PROJECT
April 28
Works-in-Progress
April 30
Works-in-Progress LAST CLASS
In planning your presentation (5 minute presentation followed by 5 minutes for discussion) keep these things in mind:
- 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 8-10 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 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 9 at 5 PM; for non-seniors, Friday May 15 at 12 PM