Project Description:
In Fall of 2008 the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University funded a group of nine faculty to begin a cross-disciplinary investigation of disability studies. The Disability Studies Working Group cultivates and disseminates the new, theoretically informed understanding of disability developed in Disability Studies, conceiving of disability as a socially constructed feature of individuals facilitating the isolation and exclusion of the disabled. It develops, articulates, and critiques the new understanding of identity and its connection to the body already emerging from related work in Gender Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Queer Studies, and other contemporary approaches to the social constitution of identity and its cultural expression. Disciplines represented include philosophy, political science, communication, English, management, educational psychology, special education, and higher education administration. Monthly meetings involving readings, critiques of participants' work in progress, and general discussion of issues in DS that arise; visits from prominent DS scholars; public lectures and classroom visits; conferences and published proceedings; travel to DS events elsewhere.