522c Kent Hall EAAS GU4027 Disability in East Asia and Beyond. 4 points. “The world isn’t built with a ramp,” writes disabled adventurer Walt Balenovich in his book Travels in a Blue Chair. Neither is the world built with any universal understanding of disability. This course examines what it means to be disabled in both theory and practice, especially in East Asian contexts. We begin by closely examining the concept of “disability” and its various connotations, then look at permutations of disability in Japan, China, and the Koreas before ending with recent, more radical ways of thinking about disability. This interdisciplinary course is framed by feminist approaches to definitions and applications of disability theory, drawing further on literary and technological approaches to representation of minority subjects. Multimedia engagement with issues ranging from guide dogs to nanotechnology will aid in understanding overlaps between, and barriers of, disability on an international scale, while also building a critical toolkit for understanding “able-bodied” assumptions in ourselves. llment
- Subject
- CHNS
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2025-2026
- Source
- catalog.barnard.edu