The Disability Studies Initiative (DSI) has made tremendous progress this year toward the creation of a new organizational unit at the UA. Through an innovative and progressive collaboration with the College of Education, Student Affairs, and the Sonoran UCEDD, the DSI has proposed the creation of an interdisciplinary center for disability- related research, education, practice and service.
The new center would bring together staff, faculty, academic specialties, services, and resources of the Disability Resource Center, the Rehabilitation program, including Deaf Studies, the Sonoran UCEDD, and a new Disability Studies program. As envisioned, the center would be the first of its kind in the country, joining what we believe to be the premier Disability Resources program in the United States with nationally ranked programs in Rehabilitation, as well as the new Sonoran UCEDD. The synergy created by this combination would enable the implementation of curricula in Disability Studies and the pursuit of a diverse teaching, research, training and service agenda driven by the shared goals and concepts of each of the Center’s units. The core philosophy driving the Center includes but is not limited to a social model of disability that places disabled people at the center of education, activism, research, and service provision and recognizes the social, cultural, political, and historical forces that affect the everyday lives of people with disabilities.
The DSI has also been working on raising awareness of and interest in disability studies, both on campus and in the community. As part of its outreach and education program, the DSI brought two nationally recognized speakers to campus: Dr. Patricia Heberer from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and scholar, writer, activist, consultant Dr. Simi Linton. Both events were a tremendous success. Most recently, the DSI helped bring the well-known poet, Ayisha Knight, to campus as part of the Tucson Poetry Festival. In fall ’07, the DSI helped to organize and offered the keynote at an Inter-professional Training Seminar that brought together 400 students from medicine, pharmacy, nursing, public health, and law. The DSI has also created a new History of Disability class, which is currently being offered through the Department of History. We are looking forward to a very bright future for Disability Studies at the University of Arizona.
Disability Studies and disability-related research programs are quickly becoming prominent features at many of the most forward thinking colleges and universities. Currently more than 30 such programs exist at institutions located across North America and the United Kingdom. The proliferation of these programs reflects a definite trend toward the incorporation of persons with disabilities, as well as disability-related issues and research, into the larger society and the burgeoning body of scholarship that explores human variation and exposes systems of power and oppression. With the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and medical and technological advancements enabling persons with disabilities to live longer, more fruitful lives, and with the aging “baby-boom” generation, Disability Studies and disability-related research programs are certain to continue to grow and expand.
The University of Arizona is uniquely positioned to become a leading center for Disability Studies in the southwestern United States. The UA has a long, rich history of disability-related programs and services that have attracted an increasing number of students and faculty from around the world to Tucson. The UA faculty and staff have also shown a long-standing commitment to cross-disciplinary research and inquiry, especially in cultural, ethnic, gender, and area studies, and in strengthening the university’s ties with the larger community.
The new disability studies program will focus on providing students at the UA and interested community members with broad exposure to innovative methodological and theoretical approaches to studying disability in the humanities, social sciences, education, law, and the health sciences. The disability studies curricula and research agenda will be driven by an interdisciplinary approach that draws from feminist and critical race theory, critical legal theories, and other interdisciplinary methodological approaches that seek to reconstruct and evaluate the broad and diverse experiences of marginalized populations. Disability Studies will focus on disability as a category of analysis and lived embodiment and emphasize the diverse experiences of disabled people in various times and locations.
Historically, scholars, professionals, politicians and much of the lay public have held a relative consensus concerning the nature of disability. They have thought of and treated disability as a measurable limitation in functioning linked to an underlying physiological deficit or impairment that prevents a person from performing “normal” tasks or appearing “normal.” With the advent of disability studies, activists, scholars, and artists have developed new perspectives on disability that center on the notion that it emanates not from physiological or cognitive difference or deficit alone, but in the interaction between the individual and larger social values, practices, and structures. Disability Studies has fostered and developed this notion of interaction, and in the process, has transformed the understanding of disability from an individual deficit to a complex product of social, environmental, and biological forces. This new perspective on disability explores the experience of being disabled from the perspective of disabled people themselves and elucidates how individuals designated “disabled” are often relegated to a socially marginalized, disadvantaged status. The analytical approaches and skills acquired by students through the discipline of Disability Studies will enable them to think critically, not only about disability, but also about the larger social and cultural justifications for inequality and oppression that affect all historically marginalized groups.
The Disability Studies Initiative (DSI) at the UA is working to identify courses, faculty, and departments, as well as community activists willing to incorporate this new intellectual approach into the education of disabled and non-disabled students, faculty, clinicians, researchers, and community members, with the ultimate goal of creating a Disability Studies Program that will raise awareness and identify and transform oppressive institutions and environments. The Disability Studies Initiative (DSI) seeks to examine how addressing disability in its full complexity can promote the participation, self-determination, and equal citizenship of people with disabilities in society. It will also explore how services that support persons with disabilities along with social, legal, and political change can reduce sources of disempowerment.
The Initiative remains open to any student, faculty, administrator, or community member who is committed to studying the complex nature of disability, with all of its implications, as well as the more pragmatic measures that can be taken to minimize the negative personal and social consequences of disability. A particular strength of the Initiative and the Disability Studies Program will be its incorporation of a diverse array of faculty, students, and community members from the health fields, the social sciences, and the humanities. The Initiative and the Program will explore issues that cut across impairment, clinical, social, cultural, ethical, legal, and policy perspectives on disability.
The members of the Disability Studies Initiative (DSI) recognize the inherent tensions that exist between the therapeutic, medical, and social models of disability; we hope to use these differences as a means of developing a Disability Studies Program at the UA that integrates a broad knowledge base and does not perpetuate long standing divisions.
The Disability Studies Initiative (DSI), will continue to work to accomplish several immediate goals, including:
The Disability Studies Initiative (DSI) would ultimately like to achieve the following long-term goals:
Executive Committee:
Michael A. Rembis, Coordinator and Adjunct Faculty
Sue Kroeger, Director, Disability Resource Center and Adjunct Faculty
Alan Strauss, Assistant Director, Disability Resource Center and Adjunct Faculty
* The planning committee consulted the Society for Disability Studies’ guidelines for creating a disability studies program before writing this plan of action.
