Schedule is subject to change - consult the MODULES in Canvas regularly

Modules and Readings will be uploaded before Tues Jan 6!

Content warnings are offered in the Home Pages of the Modules on Canvas for material that may be triggering for some, and these will be updated periodically. Please contact Joanne directly or use this form if you'd like to tell me about content that may be triggering for you so that I can mark those readings and films on the pages.

Groups will facilitate discussion on days marked with *

Week 1

Tues Jan 6 Course Introduction

Film in class: Change, Not Charity (PBS, 2025)
Simi Linton, “Reassigning Meaning,” Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, NYU Press, 1998, pp. 8-17
Mia Mingus, “Changing the Framework: Disability Justice,” Leaving Evidence blog, Feb. 2011

Thurs Jan 8 Disability Activism & the Disability Historian

Kim Nielsen, “Introduction,” A Disability History of the United States, Beacon Press, 2012, pp. xi-xxiii
Penny Richards and Susan Burch, “Documents, Ethics, and the Disability Historian,” The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Oxford UP, 2018
Kim Nielsen, “I Guess I’m an Activist. I Think It’s Just Caring: Rights and Rights Denied,” A Disability History of the United States, pp. 157-183

Week 2

Tues Jan 13 Disability and the Justification of Inequality

Watch before class the pre-recorded lecture: “Disability and Normalcy in Historical Perspective”
Douglas Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” The New Disability History: American Perspectives, eds. Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky, New York University Press, 2001, pp. 33-57
Julie Avril Minich, “Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now,” Lateral, Issue 5.1, Spring 2016
Susan Burch, “Historicizing Ableism,” Modern American History, August 8, 2025
Talila A. Lewis, “Working Definition of Ableism – January 2022 Update”

Thurs Jan 15 Disability Policy & Disability Politics

Sami Schalk, “Introduction: Black Health Matters,” Black Disability Politics, Duke University Press, 2022, pp. 1-17
Podcast: “A Death Panel History of 504, Part 1” (July 11, 2024)

Week 3

Tues Jan 20 The Black Panther Party

Film: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution clips (PBS, 2016)
Film: “Brad Lomax: Creating Communities of Care” (PBS, 2024)
Podcast: "A Death Panel History of 504, Part 2"
Optional film: Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Netflix, 2020)
Optional webinar: “Disability and Blackness: The Role of the Black Panthers in the Disability Rights Movement”(UC Berkeley, November 29, 2023)

Thurs Jan 22 Black Disability Politics of Section 504

Sami Schalk, “’We Have a Right to Rebel’: Black Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party,” Black Disability Politics, pp. 23-47
Susan Schweik, “Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504,” Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol. 31, 2011

Week 4

*Tues Jan 27 Black Liberation Work and the Disability Movement

Lezlie Frye, “Toward a Feminist Genealogy of US Disability Rights: Mapping the Discursive Legacies and Labor of Black Liberation,” Crip Genealogies, eds. Mel Chen, Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich, Duke University Press, 2023, pp. 85-102
Jina B. Kim and Sami Schalk, “Reclaiming the Radical Politics of Self-Care: A Crip-of-Color Critique,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 120, April 2021, pp. 325-342

Thurs Jan 29 Movie: Give Me Liberty (2019)

Week 5

Tues Feb 3 Dynamics of Exclusion

Watch before class: "History of Disability in the US" (first 30 minutes) https://sk.sagepub.com/video/skpromo/XADvUW/the-history-of-disability-in-the-us
Kim Nielsen, “Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough: The Progressive Era, 1890-1927,” A Disability History of the United States, pp. 100-130
Susan Schweik, “Disability and the Normal Body of the (Native) Citizen,” Social Research: An International Quarterly, Vol. 78, 2011, pp. 417-442
Douglas Baynton, “Introduction,” Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics, University of Chicago Press, 2016, pp. 1-10

*Thurs Feb 5 Eugenics and Immigration

Douglas Baynton, “Defective,” Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics, pp. 11-47
Jay Dolmage, “Disabled upon Arrival: The Rhetorical Construction of Disability and Race at Ellis Island,” Cultural Critique, Vol. 77, 2011, pp. 24-69

Week 6

*Tues Feb 10 Fighting Psychiatric Abuse

Sami Schalk, “Fighting Psychiatric Abuse: The Black Panther Party and the Black Disability Politics of Mental and Carceral Institutions,” Black Disability Politics, pp. 49-68
Jonathan Metzl, “Preface,” The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, Beacon Press, 2010, pp. ix-xxi

Thurs Feb 12 Guest lecture: Black Mad Politics (class meets on Zoom only)

Olivia Banner, “Mental Health vs Mutual Aid: Competing Visions of Care in Black-authored Films in the 1970s,” Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43(1), 2023
Sami Schalk, “Black Disability Politics Now,” Black Disability Politics, pp. 140-153

Week 7

Tues Feb 17 Film: unseen (2023, PBS POV, 88 minutes, director Set Hernandez)

Podcast version of the film unseen: https://www.unseen-film.com/podcast

*Thurs Feb 19 Asian American Disability Histories

Jonathan Hsy, “Disability, Space, and Racial Injustice: Life Writing at Angel Island Immigration Station, 1910–1940,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 43, 2024, pp. 34-56
Adria L. Imada, “‘The Potential That Was in All of Us’: Carceral Disability and the Japanese American Redress Movement,” WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Spring/Summer 2023, pp. 21-47
Optional: Naoko Wake, “Asian American Disability: A History and Its Archives,” Journal of American Ethnic History, editor of special issue “Asian American Disability,” Vol. 43.3, 2024, pp. 5-33.

Week 8

*Tues Feb 24 Labor, Public Health, & Immigration

Douglas Baynton, “Dependent,” Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics, pp. 79-105
Natalia Molina, “‘Medicalizing the Mexican’: Immigration, Race, and Disability in the Early-20^th-Century United States,” Radical History Review, Vol. 94, 2006, pp. 22-37

Thurs Feb 26 “Queering” Disability Studies & History

Ryan Lee Cartwright, “Introduction: QueerCrip Historical Analysis and the Rural White Anti-Idyll,” Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity, University of Chicago Press, 2021, pp. 1-23
Robert McRuer, “As Good As It Gets: Queer Theory and Critical Disability,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol. 9, 2003, pp. 79-105
Optional: Podcast: Disability History Association, “Queer Crip Histories of White Rural American Life,” Ryan Lee Cartwright, episode 38, Dec 2022

Week 9

*Tues March 3 History of Eugenics: QueerCrip and Feminist Approaches

Ryan Lee Cartwright, “Harlots from the Hollow: Eugenic Detectives on the Lookout for the Rural White Hovel Family,” Peculiar Places, pp. 25-48
Susan Burch and Lindsey Patterson, “Not Just Any Body: Disability, Gender, and History,” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 25, 2013, pp. 122-137
Optional: Eli Clare, “Yearning toward Carrie Buck,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Vol. 8, 2014, pp. 335-344

*Thurs March 5 QueerCrip Readings of Nonconformity, Violence, and the Media

Ryan Lee Cartwright, “Madness in the Dead Heart: Ed Gein and the Fabrication of the Transgender Heartland ‘Psycho’ Killer Myth,” Peculiar Places, pp. 87-117
Ryan Lee Cartwright, “Estranged But Not Strangers: Nonconformity Encounters Identity in 1990s Hate-Crime Documentaries,” Peculiar Places, pp. 167-189

Week 10

Tues March 10 Peer Review Workshops

Thurs March 12 TBD