Disability Studies

Degree Options: Minor Only
Locations: Lincoln Center, Rose Hill
Visit the Disability Studies Program

Student Standing at Disability Studies information table

Fordham's Disability Studies program helps students develop a nuanced understanding of the meanings and consequences of disability in a range of historical, cultural, socioeconomic and geographic contexts.

Where do our ideas about bodymind normativity emerge from? How do they shift across contexts? What are the effects of these ideas on our understanding of what it is to be human? Students also consider how disability intersects with other categories of identity and what understandings of communication, relationality, precarity, disadvantage, aesthetics, technology, design, and access open up when we center the knowledges and experiences of disabled people.

Throughout the program, students have opportunities to participate in events, lectures, and seminars both of the Fordham Disability Scholarship Cluster on campus and of the broader New York City community. Minors will graduate having acquired pragmatic knowledge of how to conceptualize and produce more accessible built and social environments.

Of course, you’ll learn more than disability studies here. You’ll also study philosophy, theology, economics, mathematics, languages, science, and the performing arts through Fordham’s common core curriculum, the centerpiece of our liberal arts education.

  • As a disability studies minor, you’ll take six courses in the field, including the required Introduction to Disabilities Studies course, one upper-level disabilities capstone course, and four electives in disability studies. Examples of the upper-level capstone courses include Labor Market and Diversity, Extraordinary Bodies, and Black Disability Studies. Examples of elective courses include Introduction to Bioethics; Media, Disability, Futurity; and Diverse Biology: Shared Humanity.

    Additionally, you will have valuable opportunities to participate in and contribute to the Fordham Disability Scholarship Cluster seminars, to attend distinguished lectures and other events throughout the year, and to engage with the broader community of disability studies scholars in New York City.

     

    • Introduction to Disabilities Studies
    • Black Disability Studies
    • Disability, Literature, Culture: Neurological, Mental, and Cognitive Difference in Culture and Context
    • Extraordinary Bodies
    • Labor Market and Diversity
    • Disability: Economic and Other Approaches
    • Independent Study

  • Education. Human rights. Architecture. Healthcare. Psychology and social work. Education. Public policy. Law. These are just a few of the fields that our disability studies minors might pursue. Graduates leave Fordham having gained both conceptual and concrete skills that will enable them to work toward producing more accessible built and social environments. In this regard, the program contributes to Fordham’s mission of social justice. Whether you enter the workforce or pursue further academic study in the field, your minor will inform you with a unique and powerful perspective.

     

     

Learn More About the Disability Studies Degree

Visit the Disability Studies Program