"Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability."
It investigates how disability is represented in literary texts and explores the cultural and social meanings of disability.
Disability Identity: The construction and representation of disability identity in literature and culture.
Disability Culture: The way in which disability is perceived and experienced within a particular culture.
Disability Rights: The legal and social aspects of disability rights and advocacy.
Disability History: The historical context of disability and its treatment throughout history.
Medicalization: The medicalization of disability and the impact of the medical model of disability on social attitudes and policies.
Ableism: Attitudes and discrimination towards disabled people.
Intersectionality: The intersection of disability with other identity categories like race, gender, and sexuality.
Disability Narratives: The representation of disability in literature and films.
Crip Theory: Disability as a form of resistance and critique of normative ableism.
Disability Justice: An intersectional and cross-movement approach to disability activism and advocacy.
Access and Accommodation: The design of physical and social environments to provide access and accommodations for people with disabilities.
Disability and Literature: The representation and interpretation of disability in literature.
Disability and Media: The representation of disability in media and popular culture.
Disability and Society: The impact of disability on society, social attitudes towards disabled people, and social policies that affect them.
Disability and Education: The inclusion of students with disabilities in education and challenges faced by them.
Disability and Employment: The challenges faced by disabled people in employment and the need for accommodations.
Disability and Technology: The use of technology to assist people with disabilities in their lives.
Disability and Sports: The participation of disabled people in sports and the development of adaptive sports.
Medical model: This approach views disability as a personal or medical issue, where an individual's impairment is the cause of their disability.
Social model: This theory argues that it is society's attitudes, environments, and policies that create disability by limiting individual abilities, rather than individual impairments.
Minority model: This approach considers disability as a minority identity, with its own culture, history, and politics.
Cultural model: This theory examines the representation of disability in cultural productions and considers how it influences and shapes attitudes.
Critical disability studies: This perspective concerns the intersection of other social categories such as race, gender, and sexuality with disability, taking a critical approach to the ways in which these constructs converge and affect disabled people's lives.
Psychoanalytic criticism: This type of literary criticism is grounded in the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and considers the ways in which disability intersects with psychological experience and representations.
Postmodern and posthumanist perspectives: These approaches question the concept of the human body as the site of disability, and instead focus on the social and cultural factors that produce disability as a category.
Phenomenology: This theoretical framework examines lived experiences of disability and the impact that it has on individuals’ personal identity and perceptions of the world around them.
"The field focused on the division between 'impairment' and 'disability', where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construct."
"This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability."
"The social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field."
"In recent years, the division between the social and medical models has been challenged."
"Recent investigations suggest using 'cross-sectional markers of stratification' may help provide new insights on the non-random distribution of risk factors capable of exacerbating disablement processes."
"Disability studies courses include work in disability history, theory, legislation, policy, ethics, and the arts."
"However, students are taught to focus on the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities in practical terms."
"The field is focused on increasing individuals with disabilities' access to civil rights and improving their quality of life."
"Disability studies primarily emerged in the US, the UK, and Canada."
"In 1986, the Section for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability of the Social Science Association (United States) was renamed the Society for Disability Studies."
"The first US disabilities studies program emerged in 1994 at Syracuse University."
"The first edition of the Disabilities Studies Reader was published in 1997."
"The field grew rapidly over the next ten years."
"Germany looks at queer disability studies since the beginning of the early 20th century."
"The disability studies in Germany are influenced by the written literary works of feminist sexologists who study how being disabled affects one's sexuality and ability to feel pleasure."
"In Norway, disability studies are focused on in the literary context."
"A variation emerged in 2017 with the first accessibility studies program at Central Washington University."
"[The program has] an interdisciplinary focus on social justice, universal design, and international Web Accessibility Guidelines (WAG3) as a general education knowledge base."
"Disability studies were also conducted in other countries through different lenses."