Courses

An independent directed reading course on a topic approved by the Faculty member who is the supervisor of the course and the Graduate Program Director. This course can only be taken in extenuating circumstances. Please contact Graduate Program Office for details.

An independent directed reading course on a topic approved by the Faculty member who is the supervisor of the course and the Graduate Program Director. This course can only be taken in extenuating circumstances. Please contact Graduate Program Office for details.

This course explores experience, identity, and the politics of race, gender/sexuality, disability, and class. The course highlights questions of ontology and epistemology within strands of critical race, feminist, and Marxist theory; and examines recent contributions of transnational, queer, and autonomist theory to disability studies. The course explores possibilities for an anti-racist, queer- and trans-inclusive disability politics capable of challenging the political economic status quo.

This course involves an analysis of mental health policy starting with early conceptualizations and approaches to mental health care, to more recent government initiatives and societal approaches in Canada, with a comparison to other international contexts. Integrated with the undergraduate course Atkinson Health Studies 4140 3.0

This course builds on students’ understanding of knowledge production and methods associated with the research pradigms. It examines the politics of knowledge production, including how institutions and other social structures influence research question and what knowledge is deemed legitimate.

This course traces the profound shifts and challenges for understanding health inequities that Intersectionality theorists and practitioners from Black, Indigenous, and Feminist Studies have brought to Health Studies and Disability Studies, including new methodological and theoretical approaches to gender and gender identity, sexuality, (dis)ability, trauma, structural violence, settler colonial studies, and environmental studies.

Provides a broad overview of definitions and paradigms of impairment and disability: medical, psychological, sociopolitical and theoretical perspectives; functionalist, role theory, interactionism, disability and human rights issue, and recent developments in feminist and postmodern approaches to disability. Attention is given to the historical and cultural development of concepts and categories of disability; disability theory and policy at provincial, national and international levels; and implications of theory and practice for the lives of persons with disabilities.

Explores current debates and issues on the implementation of disability research, including emphasis on emancipatory research and participant action research. Areas for discussion include an introduction to doing disability research, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, involving persons with disabilities in policy and planning, assessment procedures, the dissemination of research findings and accessibility of information.

Explores disability as a legal category with implications for the human rights of persons with disabilities. Areas for discussion include the history of disability legislation in Canada and internationally; the disability rights movement; the social and legal construction of competence and inequality; social discourse of law and policy; and recent human rights cases.

Prerequisites: GS/CDIS 5100 6.00, GS/CDIS 5110 3.00, GS/CDIS 5120 3.00, and two 3.00-credits elective courses at graduate level including one course being offered by the Critical Disability Studies graduate program.

Prerequisites: GS/CDIS 5100 6.00, GS/CDIS 5110 3.00, GS/CDIS 5120 3.00, and two 3.00-credits elective courses at graduate level including one course being offered by the Critical Disability Studies graduate program.

This course will provide a broad overview of key texts in the field of disability studies, as well as an in-depth analysis of competing and complementary views about how “disability” is defined. Areas to be studied include social movement theory and how this theory is reflected in the context of disability activism; tension and collaboration between academics and grass roots activists; gaps in disability studies; marginalization between and among people with disabilities; the notion of a disability community or communities; disability and the law; race, class, gender, and poverty; disability culture and literature; and social policy and the political economy of disability. The seminar also covers disability issues in the developing world and in Europe, including a comparative study of national and international laws pertaining to disability rights protection and the connections between disability rights and human rights, locally, regionally and internationally.