Until recently, the academy has enjoyed
relative consensus regarding the nature of disability. All disciplines taking
note of disability--including health professions, education, the social
sciences, and the humanities--treated the phenomenon as an empirically
measurable limitation in functioning, linked to an underlying physiological
deficit or impairment, that prevents a person from performing (or appearing)
typically. More recently, scholars have added perspectives that illustrate how
disability emanates not from physiological or cognitive difference in isolation
but in interaction with social values, practices, and structures. Instead of
treating disability as simply inherent in individuals, the field of disability
studies transforms the understanding of disability from an individual deficit
to a complex byproduct of social, environmental, and biological forces. This
perspective illuminates how individuals designated "disabled" are
treated collectively in a manner that diminishes their economic, interpersonal,
psychological, cultural, political, and physical well-being relegating them to
membership in a socially disadvantaged group.
The UIC PhD program in Disability Studies
promotes the development of new scholarly models with respect to our
comprehension of disability. The study of disability is contextualized by the
social, cultural, and historical dynamics that have identified an array of
human differences as exclusively detrimental. Part of this transformative
intellectual approach involves the education of disabled and non-disabled
academicians, researchers, policy experts, and clinicians who will join with
disabled people in the community as active challengers of oppressive
institutions and environments. The program examines how addressing disability
in its full complexity can promote the full participation, self-determination,
and equal citizenship of people with disabilities in society.
In order to achieve these goals, UIC's
disability studies program recognizes disability as a complex phenomenon
existing at the intersection of human differences and social values. Disability
studies scholars view disability, not simply as a defect inside a person, but
as a complex relationship between society and people who function differently
from the norm. The UIC PhD program in disability studies promotes an awareness
of disability that supports individuals in shaping their identities and lives.
Moreover, the program examines how services that support persons with
disabilities along with social and political change can reduce sources of
disempowerment.
