Minor Requirements

A total of 18 credits are required to complete the Minor in Disability Studies.

We are always developing new courses. This list is representative, but not exclusive. For more up-to-date listings, please check the Courses page.

DBST-270 Introduction to Disability Studies

This course explores disability from an interdisciplinary perspective: literature, first-person and identity-first accounts, public policy advocacy, and the basic legal framework. Disability Studies discusses Disability Stories, Law, and Social Policy through disabled lens. Our texts include short stories, personal narratives by individuals who have disabilities or by their family members, and articles by disability rights activists.

We integrate film stories with our readings to critically examine how pop culture represents, and misrepresents, disability and bodily differences. This course also analyzes the medical, social, and cultural models of Disability. We begin the course with a cluster of related topics: What is Disability? Why do definitions matter? How is disability socially constructed? We end with such questions as: How is Disability viewed in the media? What and how can allies do better in supporting disabled people?

Three Disability Studies core courses:

ANTH 256 Disability and Culture
BIOL 394 Genomics, Disability, and Health
EDIJ 253 Children with Disabilities
ENGL 268 Disability and the Arts
DBST 303 Mad Studies
DBST 350 Educating the Young Disabled Child: A Global Comparison (Long)
DBST 424 Disability Studies Seminar
ENGL 443 Gender and Care in Modern U.S. Poetry
IDST 010 Ignatius Seminar: Disability, Culture, and the Question of Care
PHIL 106 Bioethics and Disability
THEO 074 Disability, Ethics, EcoJustice (Can be applied to the core when added to another Core Pathways class)
THEO 130 Religion and Disability Studies
WGST 239 Art, Medicine, and Gender
WGST 234 Feminist Disability Studies

Two elective courses that engage disability in theory or practice:

AFAM 315 The Psychic Holds of Slavery
ANTH 250 Intro to Medical Anthropology
ANTH 251 Anthropology and the Body
BIOL 394 Genomics, Disability and Health
CULP 242 Foreign Bodies
CULP 271 Bodies, Technology, & Violence
EDIJ 220 Education, Equity, and Advocacy
EDIJ 241 Seminar in Urban Education
JCIV 175 The Holocaust: An Examination of Gender and Nazi Racial Ideology
HSCI/HESY 160 Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
HESY 010 Healthcare in America
INAF 175 Holocaust: Gender and Racial Ideology
INAF 269 What Really Happened in the Camps
PHIL 105 Bioethics
PHIL 112 Gender and Feminism
PHIL 440 Bioethics and Mental Illness
PHIL 441 Bioethics and “Abnormal” Bodies
PHIL 441 The Politics of Weight and Eating
PSYC 151 Abnormal Psychology
PSYC 353 Culture & Psychopathology
SOCI 111 Flourishing: College & Community
SOCI 109 Sociology of Health and Illness
STIA 421 Global Health Foundations
THEO 023 Christian Initiation
THEO 028 Religion and the Body
THEO 121 Ritual, Spirituality and Justice
THEO 122 The Church and the Poor
WGST 141 Introduction to Sexuality Studies
WGST 233 HIV, Culture, and Politics
UNXD 204 and/or 205 Challenges in Childhood and Society

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive. If students identify other courses that provide significant opportunities to engage with disability in theory or practice, they should present them to the Director for approval. A maximum of two courses taken elsewhere (i.e., study abroad or summer courses) may be counted as electives in the minor, with the approval of the steering committee.