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Academic Units

Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores social, political, cultural, and economic factors that shape disability; considers the ways disability is understood and constructed across different historical moments, cultures, and nations; examines the intersectional relationships amongst disability, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality; and foregrounds the experiences and perspectives of disabled activists, scholars, artists, and thinkers.

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Take a Disability Studies Course

If you’d like to see what our Disability courses are like, you should take our introductory course: DISAB 3000.

Explore the concept of disability in health, education, employment and legal systems, as well as the perspectives of people with disabilities themselves and critically examine factors that support systemic oppression and methods and strategies of moving toward a more inclusive society.

Full Course Description

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Attend Upcoming & Watch Past Disability Studies Lectures

Learn directly from leading Disability Studies experts through our annual Disability Studies Lecture, where we explore exceptional research and hold critical discussion on intersectional scholarship, models of excellence and more.

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Join the Faculty/Staff Disability Studies Mailing List

If you are faculty or staff interested in disability-related topics, research, or events, and you would like to be included on our Disability Studies mailing list, please contact Angela Smith at ang.smith@utah.edu.

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Ask Us a Question

For questions about the Disability Studies Program, please contact our Disability Studies Program Director, Dr. Angela M. Smith, at ang.smith@utah.edu.

Transform Your Degree

US cultural ideals of beauty, youth, fitness, strength, sex appeal, social skill, mental acuity and “health” all rely on norms of ablebodiedness, heterosexuality and whiteness. Thus, we approach disability not as fixed or singular category, but as a fluid, historically shifting, culturally-specific formation that intersects with race, class, gender, language and nation.

The Disability Studies minor provides an interdisciplinary learning experience about key disability issues while also attuning you to varied ways of thinking, communicating and moving through the world. Together we will work together to crip — or disturb — contemporary epistemologies of disability.

Visit our Advising Page

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Dean of School for Cultural and Social Transformation is named

University of Utah Provost Mitzi M. Montoya announced that Ruma Chopra has accepted an offer to serve as dean of the School for Cultural and Social Transformation.
a back background with colored stripes representing the spectrum of identities within the disability community

Making it Accessible

For the Day of Disability and Neurodiversity, a panel of campus experts provided brief overviews and demonstrations of basic accessibility practices for communications and event planning.
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Transformative Intersectional Collective (TRIC) Pedagogy Workshop

In this opening presentation for the TRIC Pedagogy Workshop, Dr. Nirmala Erevelles prompts attendees to think about how to teach and engage disability in our courses and classrooms.
open laptop showing the participants of the Disability Studies lecture

Disability, Eco(in)justice, and Transnational Solidarity

Nirmala Erevelles draws on criticism to explain how the story of environmental (in)justice is tied to racialized, classed, casteist and ableist histories and discusses the implications for transformative praxis.