Catalog Course Description

This course will explore the intersection of women's experience and disability issues, emphasizing the social and personal impact of disability and chronic illness on relationships, identity, employment, health, body image, sexuality, reproduction, motherhood, and aging. Through real stories of women's lives which reached the media in the last decade and before, students will move toward a dynamic understanding of the impact of a range of physical, emotional, and mental disabilities in the context of current social forces and public policy. We will explore historic perspectives as well as current trends in medicine, independent living, care-giving, insurance, public benefits, law, and community activism as they affect and are affected by disabled women and girls and their families. We will discuss controversial ethical issues such as prenatal screening, wrongful birth law suits, and physician-assisted suicide. Course readings will draw on the rich literature of disabled women's anthologies, biography and autobiograhpy, scholarly and popular literature of disability, feminist analyses, creative writing, women's art, film, and theatre.

Spring Term

3 hours of Instructor presentation of course materials per week and 6 hours of Outside Work Hours per week.

Fall Term

3 hours of Instructor presentation of course materials per week and 6 hours of Outside Work Hours per week.