Designing Access: Body, Disability, and Technoscience in American Culture 4219-SD0035
This class invites students to think of body and disability in the context of technology. We will ask what is access, investigate its politics, and explore how technology and science participate in building accessible world (and for whom). We will familiarize ourselves with the concept of universal design and its history in the United States and think of both access and design through race and gender. We will also investigate the concept of prosthesis and its cultural meaning as well as discuss the ideas of built and natural environment and see how science and technology shape the expression or elimination of disability, illness, and madness.
We will read a range of theoretical texts and examine to what extent technology and science participate in sustaining cultural bodily norms and biases. At the same time, this class rejects essentialist understandings of body, disability and technoscience and attempts to untangle the complex relationship between the three without making definitive assumptions.
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Term 2023Z:
None |
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Upon completing this course a student:
- is familiar with different theories of access, design and disability,
- uses terminology connected with critical design studies and disability studies,
- comprehends how race, gender and class shape societal definitions and practices of design and access,
- is aware of how ableism impacts society.
Skills
Upon completing this course a student:
- formulates critical arguments on topics related to body, disability, access, and design
- is able to synthesize information,
- has the skills to use critical design studies and disability studies in analysis of U.S. culture,
- is able to communicate ideas and theories effectively orally and in writing in a manner appropriate to the intended audience.
Competences
Upon completing this course a student:
- comprehends academic texts and is able to use them in the critical analysis of culture,
- is able to identify ableist content,
- is able to actively participate in class discussions,
- collects and analyzes information effectively.
Assessment criteria
Students need minimum of 60% to pass the course.
Students are required to attend classes, read/watch assigned materials and participate in class discussions.
Response papers (30 points, 10 points per response)
Students will submit three short response papers to texts selected by them.
Final paper + presentation (50 points; paper 30 points, presentation 20 points)
Students will be required to conduct an observation of access and design practices of their choosing and analyze them in the paper. They will also prepare a presentation discussing their observation to be given either in class or to be presented online.
Attendance and participation (20 points)
Grading scale:
100-97: 5!
96-91: 5
90-84: 4+
83-78: 4
77-68: 3+
67-60: 3
59-0: 2
Bibliography
PLEASE NOTE THAT TEXTS MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
BODY, ACCESS AND DESIGN: THEORIZATIONS
1. Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the body”, Dan Goodley “Introduction to Disability Studies”
2. Tanya Titchkosky, The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning (selection)
3. Kelly Fritsch, “Accessible,” Crip Camp, dir. James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham 2020 (available on Netflix)
4. David Wills, Prosthesis (selection)
ACCESS HISTORY
5. Bess Williamson, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (selection)
6. Aimie Hamraie, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (selection)
7. David Serlin, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (selection)
8. Katherine Ott, “Disability things: Material culture and American disability
history, 1700–2010”
DESIGN OF EVERYDAY LIFE
9. Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”
10. Ingunn Moser, “Disability and the promises of technology: Technology, subjectivity and embodiment within an order of the normal”
11. Carmen Papalia, “A New Model for Access in the Museum,” Contra* Podcast on Critical Design – a conversation with Corbett O’Toole (two parts)
12. Mara Mills, “On Disability and Cybernetics: Helen Keller, Norbert Wiener, and the Hearing Glove”
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT?
13. Alison Kafer, “Bodies of Nature: The Environmental Politics of Disability”
14. Alice Wong, “The Rise and Fall of the Plastic Straw: Sucking in Crip Defiance”
15. Conclusion
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Term 2023Z:
None |
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: