Disability Studies Program

Disability Studies Program at Fordham

Fordham’s Disability Studies Program helps students develop nuanced understandings of the meanings and consequences of disability in a range of historical, cultural, socioeconomic, and geographic contexts. It encourages students to consider critical questions about the nature of humanness and our bodyminds: Where are our ideas about body-mind normativity rooted? How do they shift across contexts? What are the effects of these ideas on our understanding of what it means to be human?

By centering the knowledge and experiences of disabled people, our courses open students to broader, more nuanced understandings of communication, relationality, precarity, (dis)advantage, aesthetics, technology, design, and access. Students also explore how disability intersects with other categories of identity such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. 

Coursework in the minor consists of two required classes (Introduction to Disability Studies and an upper-level elective) and four general electives. Examples of the upper-level electives include:

• Black Disability Studies
• Media, Disability, Futurity
• Philosophy of Disability
• Unstrange Minds

Throughout the program, students have opportunities to participate in events, lectures, and the Research Consortium on Disability.