74 Disability Studies

Digital Methods for Disability Studies

Digital Methods for Disability Studies introduces students to a range of technologies and teaches them to think critically with and through media objects, practices, and processes. Students ask critical questions about digital methods and explore how these methods work with other forms of knowledge production.

Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN)

OAPEN includes many disability studies-related open access books in their database which, though they are not strictly textbooks, can be incorporated into your course readings.  Some of them have CC-BY-4.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 copyright licenses that you can adopt, remix, transform, and build upon the original.  Search the keyword “disability” and browse.  Check the copyright status assigned to selected titles.  Refer to the four different copyrights.

The following four titles are examples from the OAPEN collection, with portions of descriptions taken from their abstracts.

Ableism in Academic

This edited volume attempts to theorize experiences of Ableism in academia from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Physical Disability and Sexuality: Stories from South Africa

This edited volume explores physical disability and sexuality in South Africa, drawing on past studies, new research conducted by the editors, and first-person narratives from people with physical disabilities in the country.

Disability Studies and Spanish Culture

Disability Studies and Spanish Culture is the first book to apply the tenets of Disability Studies to the Spanish context. While researchers and students of cinema will be particularly interested in the book’s detailed analyses of the formal aspects of the films, comics, and novels discussed, readers from backgrounds in history, political science and sociology will all be able to appreciate discussions of contemporary legislation, advocacy groups, cultural perceptions, models of social integration and more. The book is directed, also, toward those readers more familiar with the growing field of Disability Studies itself—making the argument that the specific case of Spanish culture and society speaks to shifts in the social attitudes and theoretical understandings of disability more broadly considered.

Disability, Health, and Human Development

In low-income countries, there has been very little research on disability and its link to deprivations. Much of the research is recent, and research using traditional poverty indicators (e.g., consumption expenditures) paints an unclear picture on the association between disability and deprivations. This is important as the prevalence of health conditions and impairments is expected to rise with an increasing life expectancy and as more policies try to address deprivations in relation to disability. This book asks the following: How should disability be defined to analyze and inform policies related to wellbeing? What is the prevalence of functional difficulties? What inequalities are associated with functional difficulties? What are the economic consequences of functional difficulties? The empirical work is focused on Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good

From the description: “With recourse to experimental rhetoric, interdisciplinary discretion, and the playful wisdoms of childhood, Cheng contends that reparative attitudes toward music and musicology can serve as barometers of better worlds.”