Disability Studies Program

Minor in Disability Studies

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 body-mind 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 knowledge and experiences of disabled people.

A minor in Disability Studies prepares students for careers in human rights, medicine, and allied health, psychology, public policy, education, social work, law, design, and the humanities. 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.

Coursework in the minor consists of two required classes (Introduction to Disability Studies and an upper-level capstone) and four electives. 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.

Throughout the program, students have opportunities to participate in events, lectures, and the Research Consortium on Disability. Minors will graduate having acquired pragmatic knowledge of how to conceptualize and produce more accessible built and social environments.