DISABILITY QUESTIONING THE HUMAN ESSENCE

Course Objectives:

This course aims to

• introduce key concepts and debates in the Critical Disability Studies,
• develop a critical understanding of ability as the core of human essence and social life, and
• develop awareness about how social norms are (re)produced in various social, cultural, political, and economic realms as well as how they generate stigmatization.

Course Content: This course aims to introduce a critical approach to some of the deep-seated assumptions around physical and mental abilities as the basis of human essence and social life. It focuses on disability as an analytical category to question what is considered normal in society. This course addresses disability as a wide spectrum, including physical, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities as well as chronic illness and pain and looks at how social norms operate to stigmatise certain bodies, minds, and groups of people. Topics to be dealt with include history of disability, its cultural representation, understandings of disability in the Global South, activism, citizenship, and gendered experiences of disability.