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Summer 2025 Disability Studies Courses
Disability Studies is a multi-disciplinary field that investigates, critiques, and enhances Western society’s understandings of disability.
The Disability Studies Program’s Minor, Major, and Graduate Certificate offer a critical framework for understanding disability as a social, political, and human rights issue, highlighting both the challenges of exclusion and the empowering perspectives of disability activism and scholarship.
DIS ST / HSTCMP 402 & 502 Topics in Disability History (A-term, 5 credits)
Instructor: Joanne Woiak, jwoiak@uw.edu
Term: Summer A-term
Syllabus: Disability History Syllabus (canvas link)
Distance learning format: Synchronous class on Zoom will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:50-4:00pm. All other lectures, podcasts, and films will be asynchronous. NOTE: This course can be completed asynchronously.
Fulfills: DIV, SSc, DIS ST Subfield B Historical & Global, and DIS ST Graduate Certificate elective
Course description: Topics covered include disability activist movements, histories of medicine and technology in the lives of disabled and D/deaf people, design, material culture, and accessibility. Readings will include selected chapters from: Ashley Shew, Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023); Jaipreet Virdi, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History (2020); Bess Williamson, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (2019).
DIS ST 360 Redesigning Humanity: Disability in Speculative Fiction. (Full-term, 5 credits)
Instructor: Joanne Woiak, jwoiak@uw.edu
Term: Full-term
Syllabus: 360 Syllabus link
Distance learning format: Asynchronous
Fulfills: DIV, SSc, DIS ST Subfield C Diversity, Representation, Identity
Readings: We will read short stories, watch SF films, and read these 2 novels: Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017); Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)
Course description: How did speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler and other disabled, BIPOC, and multiply marginalized artist-activists imagine where we would be in the near future? Their interventions in the speculative fiction (SF) genre aim to “write ourselves into the future,” as visionary author Butler put it.
This course will analyze SF texts – centering stories and novels by Black disabled authors, as well as several SF films – that use speculative settings and non-realist conventions to comment on contemporary social, political, and ethical concerns.
B EDUC 491 / DIS ST/ LSJ / CHID 332 Disability and Society. (Full-term, 5 credits)
Instructor: Jason Naranjo, jnaranjo@uw.edu
Term: Full-term
Distance learning format: Hybrid, community-based learning
Fulfills: SSc, DIS ST Subfield A or C
Readings: We will read short stories, watch SF films, and read these 2 novels: Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017); Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)
Course modality: In-person class meetings on a few Fridays, and in addition 5-7 service learning days to arranged across a range of activities in the greater Seattle area with Outdoors For All.
