Feminist Geographies of Dis/ability (SCT2133.01)

Emily Mitchell-Eaton

In this course we will engage anti-racist feminist theory, crip theory, and human geography to think critically about dis/ability. We will draw on critical geographies of disability to think about the built environment and institutional design; geographic scales of the body and the body-mind; spaces of the home and institutions; and im/mobility and spatial access. We will also consider how dis/ability is shaped by (and also shapes) practices of care, experiences of embodiment, and emotion. Furthermore, we will grapple with the legacies of trauma produced by slavery, colonization, surveillance, and incarceration, as well as by movements like eugenics and white liberal feminism, while considering trauma’s complicated relationships to medicalized notions of wellness, disease, and recovery. Throughout the course, we will consider disability as intersecting with race, queerness, fatness, class, and trans* and gender-nonconforming/non-binary experiences; and difference, pathology, and deviance. Most centrally, we will ask: What is the spatiality of dis/ability, and how can space be occupied and reappropriated for radically inclusive uses? How can we understand both normality and deviance as socially constructed concepts that nonetheless have real, and uneven, implications for people’s lives?

Prerequisites: None.
Credits: 4
M/Th 10:00-11:50
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Course Frequency: Every 2-3 years
This course is categorized as All courses, SCT.