Disability and Bioethics

Instructor: Elizabeth Reis
Tuesdays, 5 PM-7:40 PM
Macaulay Honors College, Online
MHC 456

This course will examine social, cultural, gendered, and bioethical approaches to human variations that become categorized as disability. Bioethics discussions about disability have largely been limited to quality of life analyses; by contrast, Disability Studies scholarship takes a more comprehensive look at ethical issues affecting the lived experiences of people with disabilities, including both clinical and broader social justice concerns. The readings for this course have been chosen to offer analytical tools for thinking about a range of disabilities (including those that affect mobility, senses, cognition, and psychological states and those that result from illnesses, both apparent and invisible). Our focus will be on social, as opposed to medical, models of understanding disability and difference and will highlight activism and political interventions led by people with disabilities. (In CUNY First the course is called Politics and Disability.)

Interested in this course? Please contact your advisor.

Elizabeth Reis
Professor

Macaulay Honors College
Elizabeth.Reis@mhc.cuny.edu
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