3.00 Credits
This course investigates the cultural meanings attached to extraordinary bodies and minds. Cultural and literary scholarship has extensively explored issues connected with identities derived from race, gender and sexuality. Only recently have concepts of bodily identity, impairment, stigma, monstrosity, marginalization, beauty, deviance, and difference begun to cohere around disability as a concept and have emerged into a discipline called 'disability studies'. This course covers topics such as human rights, feminism, medical attitudes, social stigma, normalcy, life narratives, pedagogy, gothic horror, bodily representation, mental impairment, the politics of charity, community and collective culture, bible narrative, the built environment, and empowerment, in a range of disciplines including literary studies, film, theology, government policy, art, and drama. Key texts and films will include The Elephant Man, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir, Milton's Samson Agonistes, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Ben Jonson's Volpone and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As part of the assessment, students who take this class will take part in a local placement with people with disabilities in order to gain experience of community-based learning.