Spring 2024

Disabling Institutions

Listed in: , as EDST-437  |  Political Science, as POSC-437

Faculty

Kristin Bumiller (Section 01)

Description

(Offered as POSC 437 and EDST 437) This course will consider how institutions, often contrary to their intended purposes, serve to disable individuals and limit their life potential. We will examine a variety of institutions, including state bureaucracies, facilities designed to house people with mental and physical conditions, schools, and prisons. We will also consider a range of disablements, resulting from visible and invisible disabilities as well as gender, sexuality, race and class-based discrimination. We will explore how institutions might be redesigned to less rigidly enforce normalcy and to enable the political participation of individuals who currently experience social exclusion.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Bumiller.

How to handle overenrollment: Preference will be given to seniors and juniors

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Students will engage in a variety of modes of learning including, written work, high reading load, oral presentations, creative work, and visual analysis. In additional to the legal requirements for accommodation, efforts will be made to encourage and support diverse learning styles. The course will also as much as possible adhere to universal design principles, in an effort to make the learning accessible to all students.

EDST 437 - LEC

Section 01
Tu 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM SCCE A331

ISBN Title Publisher Author(s) Comment Book Store Price
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates Anchor Books Erving Goffman TBD
The Disability Bioethics Reader Routledge Joel Reynolds and Christine Wieseler Amherst Books TBD
Modernity and the Holocaust Cornell University Press Zygmunt Bauman Amherst Books TBD
Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust Routledge Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzezinski Amherst Books TBD
Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail Oxford University Press Michael L. Walker Amherst Books TBD
Torn apart : how the child welfare system destroys Black families--and how abolition can build a safer world Basic Books Dorothy Roberts Amherst Books TBD

These books are available locally at Amherst Books.

Offerings

Other years: Offered in Spring 2025