Are the medical and social models of disability incompatible, or (how) can scholars reconcile and utilize them both? What existing theoretical models from other related interdisciplinary fields (gender studies, for instance, or American studies or medical anthropology) may be brought to bear on the new study of disability, with what benefits, modifications and difficulties of translation? How do all these questions pertain to the development and implementation of effective disability policy?

Berkeley is particularly suited for a disability studies program. The Deaf-Blind school, founded at the turn of the century, was the principal school in the West developing new approaches to educating those with hearing and speech impairments and spawning leaders for those communities.  The Cowell Hospital program was one of the first programs in the nation to bring people with significant disabilities to campus for undergraduate education.  The Center for Independent Living brought students and those in the community with disabilities together for ongoing service provision and advocacy; it was the model for the first national legislation funding such centers.  The national and international disability movement was heavily influenced by Berkeley disability organizations. 

 

For several decades, UC Berkeley was one of the two or three major universities with faculty engaged in disability policy research.  The World Institute on Disability, the premiere research organization run by people with disabilities, was started here.  A strong cooperative relationship between WID and the School of Public Health resulted in the development of the Ed Roberts Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellowships in Disability and Rehabilitation Research, a program that for several years brought scholars in to teach an array of disability studies courses and that has now been revived.

 

Nationally prominent community organizations nearby (such as the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and Berkeley Planning Associates) offer strong resources upon which campus personnel and programs have drawn. The Bancroft Library's oral history and archives project on the disability movement is a new resource of growing national importance for scholars in the developing interdisciplinary field of disability studies.

Four years ago the University of California awarded a Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education aimed at supporting the development of a disability studies curriculum to two faculty members whose very different specialties represent some of the interdisciplinary reach of this new field and the breadth (both within the Division of Letters and Science and across L&S and the professional schools) of faculty interest: Frederick Collignon, Chair of City and Regional Planning, and Susan Schweik, Associate Professor of English.

 

Our 32 member faculty board includes five faculty from English, three from Anthropology, seven from Public Health, two from Law, four from Social Welfare, and faculty members from Computer Science, Public Policy, Political Science, Spanish and Portuguese, and Architecture. Last fall, Chancellor Berdahl honored the developing Disability Studies program and the World Institute on Disability's extensive support with a Community Partnership Award. These efforts have now borne fruit in Berkeley's Disability Studies minor.

Anthropology 119: Special Topics in Medical Anthropology

Architecture 129x: Universal Design

Art 165: Art, Medicine and Disability
[Note: This is a new course number. The course has been taught in the past by Katherine Sherwood as a special topics Art 160 course.]

Chicano Studies 176: Chicanos and Health Care

Computer Science 160: Human Computer Interaction

Economics 157: Health Economics

English 31AC: Race, Ethnicity, Medicine and Disability in American Cultures

EECS 294: Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities

IDS 130: Seminar on Social, Political and Ethical Issues in Health and Medicine

Landscape Architecture 140: Social and Psychological Factors in Open Space Design

Law 285.6: Current Social Justice Skills and Practice Issues

Law 287: Disability Rights Law

Law: Mental Health Law: Skills & Policy (to be offered in Spring 2005)

Public Health 290: Aging, Health and Functioning (to be renamed "Aging, Health and Disability")

Public Health 130AC: Aging, Health and Diversity

Public Health 150C: Introduction to Public Health Biology

Public Health 150D: Introduction to Health Policy and Management

Public Health 150E: Introduction to Social and Behavioral Health

Public Policy 172: Health Care Policy Analysis

Sociology 155: Sociology of Illness and Medicine

Social Welfare 210C: Aging Processes

Social Welfare 245: Direct Practice in Health Settings

Social Welfare 246: Direct Practice in Aging Settings

Social Welfare 275: Diversity Sensitive and Competent Social Work

UGIS 112: Women and Disability

 

These additional courses have, in previous semesters, been taught, or will in the future be taught, with disability content and may be approved as electives based upon their current course content:

American Studies 10
Anthropology 112: Special Topics in Biological Anthropology
Social Welfare 105: Current Topics in Social Welfare
Anthropology 189: Special Topics in Social and Cultural Anthropology (One section of this course, subtitled "Anthropology and Disability," was offered in Spring 2002, 2003  and Spring 2004)
American Studies 110: Special Topics in American Studies (One section of this course, subtitled "The History of the Disability Rights Movement in Berkeley," was offered in Spring 2002)
English 180A: Autobiography (One section of this course, subtitled "Disability Memoir," was taught by Georgina Kleege in Fall 2003
Public Health 190: Disability Policy Research (1997-2000)
Rhetoric 42AC: American Cultures (One section of this course, subtitled "Foundations of American Cyber-Culture," was taught by Charis Thompson and Greg Niemeyer in Fall 2004)

All upper-division courses used in satisfaction of the Minor Program must be taken for a letter grade. The student must achieve at least a C average (2.0) in the upper-division courses offered in satisfaction of a Minor Program.

ENGLISH 175: Literature and Disability.
The course explores disability as a representational system and discursive construction. It analyzes the four aspects of disability Rosemarie Garland Thomson has described:  "First, [disability] is a system for interpreting bodily variations; second, it is a relationship between bodies and their environments; third, it is a set of practices that produce both the able-bodied and the disabled; fourth, it is a way of describing the inherent instability of the embodied self.

Or:

CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING 120: Community Planning for Disability.
The course covers housing, transportation, public accessibility,
universal design, independent living, and other services, from the
perspective of local government & community action.  Students examine how communities respond to needs of people with disabilities, using a policy and program planning framework.  Examples are drawn from both local and governmental levels.  The response options are analyzed technically, with the
difficulties of responses analyzed from both an economics and a political science perspective.  Coursework requires students to interview people with varying disabilities as well as service providers, and to write a paper analyzing in more depth one of the types of community response.

In addition to the core courses, students in the minor must take three additional courses, to be chosen from a list of approved courses, with the help of designated faculty advisors.

Our goal is to allow students maximum flexibility in designing a program that will both supplement their majors and give them wider exposure to the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. Students can use either the Literature and Disability or the Community Planning course as one of these additional courses, if they have taken the other one as a core course. Faculty advisors work with individual students to ensure that they develop a coherent minor program.