Disability Studies Coursework: New and Forthcoming

What courses are available next quarter?

This page documents our current and upcoming coursework in Disability Studies! We hope that you are excited to develop, teach, and/or enroll in them as well. We also have a list of courses across the disciplines that could contribute to our new Minor in Critical Disability Studies as electives or topics courses. At the end of this page, we include an archive of recently offered courses and their descriptions.

Have we missed one? Please use this form to let us know about new courses in your unit relevant to Critical Disability Studies so that we can add them to our growing list!

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The Critical Disability Studies Program & Minor
- When will DISA coursework on [topic] be available?
- Our Core DISA courses for the Minor in Critical Disability Studies
DISA Courses Next Quarter
- Spring 2024
- Summer 2024
Coursework in Disability Studies: Current & In-Development
Recent Coursework Archive by Quarter

The Critical Disability Studies Program & Minor

The disability studies academic program and DISA course prefix launched in AY 2022-23, and our Minor was just approved! Learn how to declare a Minor in Critical Disability Studies today! Read more about the academic program and its mission here and find us in the WWU course catalogue!

I want to add a Minor in CDS!

When will DISA coursework on [topic] be available?

Developing new curriculum and coursework is a gradual process. Over the next several years, expect a number of new courses to be added to our growing list below. Many new classes begin as experimental courses (numbered X97 in the course catalogue), which will then be transitioned to formally numbered DISA courses as the DS Minor and the new Institute for Critical Disability Studies grows.

Our Core DISA courses for the Minor in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 330 – Critical Disability Studies (BCGM GUR)
DISA 350 – Topics in Critical Disability Studies
DISA 450 – Capstone in Critical Disability Studies

DISA Courses Next Quarter

Spring 2024

DISA 330: Critical Disability Studies – GUR
- Description: 5 Credits. BCGM GUR. This course provides an exploration of the field of critical disability studies. Students will learn about several central topics, including disability rights and disability justice movements, cultural criticism of literature and popular media, and the principles of universal design in physical and digital spaces. Students will explore disability as an identity category that intersects with other identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. This is an interdisciplinary course designed for students from any major.
- Instruction: Andrew Lucchesi
- Section details: remote asynchronous, CRN 23591
- This is a Core Class in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 350: Topics in Critical Disability Studies
- Description: 5 Credits.
- Instruction: Lindsay Foreman-Murray
- Section details: in-person Bellingham, MW 10:00 – 11:50 am, CRN 23590
- This course is crosslisted with SPED 310, and can count as either a Core Class or Elective in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

Summer 2024

DISA 330: Critical Disability Studies – GUR
- Description: 5 Credits. BCGM GUR. This course provides an exploration of the field of critical disability studies. Students will learn about several central topics, including disability rights and disability justice movements, cultural criticism of literature and popular media, and the principles of universal design in physical and digital spaces. Students will explore disability as an identity category that intersects with other identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. This is an interdisciplinary course designed for students from any major.
- Instruction: Anika Tilland-Stafford
- Section details: Remote Synchronous, 10 – 11:50 am MTWR , CRN 30656
- This is a Core Class in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

Coursework in Disability Studies: Current & In-Development

The list below is divided into DISA courses, new courses that are available or have recently been offered, and a list of courses that are in development and have not yet been made available on the course catalogue. You can now add a Minor or Interest in Critical Disability Studies!

XY01 – Critical Disability Studies Minor
XYIN – Critical Disability Studies Interest

DISA Courses in Critical Disability Studies:

Core Minor Courses

DISA 330 – Critical Disability Studies – BCGM GUR

DISA 330: Critical Disability Studies – GUR
- Description: 5 Credits. BCGM GUR. This course provides an exploration of the field of critical disability studies. Students will learn about several central topics, including disability rights and disability justice movements, cultural criticism of literature and popular media, and the principles of universal design in physical and digital spaces. Students will explore disability as an identity category that intersects with other identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. This is an interdisciplinary course designed for students from any major.
- Instruction: Daman Wandke, Kristen Chmielewski, Andrew Lucchesi
- Section details: Varies: Asynchronous online; Face-to-face
- Previous offerings: Spring 2023 (as DISA 397A); Summer 2023; Fa 2023
- Next offering(s): Quarterly
- This is a Core Class in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 350 – Topics in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 450 – Capstone in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 397 – Critical Disability Studies (see DISA 330)

DISA 397: Critical Disability Studies
- Description: 5 Credits. BCGM GUR. This course provides an exploration of the field of critical disability studies. Students will learn about several central topics, including disability rights and disability justice movements, cultural criticism of literature and popular media, and the principles of universal design in physical and digital spaces. Students will explore disability as an identity category that intersects with other identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. This is an interdisciplinary course designed for students from any major.
- Instruction: Kristen Chmielewski
- Section details: face-to-face
- Previous offerings: Spring 2023 TR 10:00 – 11:50 am, CRN 24011
- Next offering(s): N/A. This course is now offered as DISA 330.

Courses in Disability Studies throughout Western:

American Sign Language and Culture (ASLC*)

*Previously offered as EXCE courses

ASLC 101 (Prev. EXCE 101) – Elementary ASL/Culture (ACGM GUR)

Elementary ASL/Culture
- Description: 5 Credits. ACGM GUR. This course provides practice in ASL conversational skills, regarding learning and giving signs as well as receiving signs and basic signs for everyday living. In addition, this course focuses upon worldwide deaf culture, historical aspects of deafness and the development of a variety of supports for the deaf community, especially in developing countries. ASL is the primary sign language used in North America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. The course also provides for exploration of other systems of sign communication used internationally.
- Instruction: Linda Boyd
- Section offerings: Face-to-face

ASLC 102 (Prev. EXCE 102) – Elementary ASL II

ASLC 103 (Prev. EXCE 103) – Elementary ASL III

*Note: A maximum of one ASLC 10X courses can count as an elective for the Minor.

Computer Science (CSCI)

CSCI 497T / 597T – Accessible Computing

Accessible Computing
- Title: Accessible Computing (graduate & undergraduate)
- Description: 4 Credits
  - This project-based course introduces software accessibility principles. Students will learn how to design and build software for users with different abilities, e.g., people with visual impairments. Topics include:
    1. Interaction design for users with different abilities
    2. Ethics and human subject research
    3. Accessibility testing and evaluation techniques
    4. Open-source assistive technologies
    5. Machine learning for accessible computing
    6. Software engineering tools for accessible computing
    7. Mobile accessibility
    8. Wearable devices for people with disabilities
  - Prerequisites: CSCI 345 or instructor permission
- Instruction: Yasmine Elglaly
- Previously Offered: Fall 2021, CRN 44199, 44644
- Future Offering(s): TBD

Disability and Advocacy (DIAD*)

*Previously offered as EXCE courses

DIAD 205 (Prev. EXCE 205) – Disability, Diversity, and the Mass Media (BCGM GUR)

Disability, Diversity, and the Mass Media
- Description: 4 Credits. BCGM GUR. Introduction to the experience and perspectives of those with disabilities.
- Instruction: Daman Wandke
- Section details: online asynchronous & hybrid offerings
- Offered every quarter!

English (ENG)

ENG 201 – Writing in the Humanities: Disability in YA Novels

ENG 201: Writing in the Humanities: Disability in YA Novels
- Title: Representation of Disability in Books Written for Children and Young Adults
- Description: 5 Credits; CCOM
  - English 201 is a composition course that offers advanced instruction and practice in writing using ideas, texts and questions from a specified topic in the humanities. This section of 201 will examine the social significance, cultural power, and personal influence—not to mention delight—of children’s books and young adult literature as the underlying topic of our research and writing. In particular, we’ll look at how disability is portrayed to children.
- Instruction: English Department Faculty; Cathy McDonald
- Previously offered: Winter 2022, CRN 10765

ENG 301 – Disability and Public Writing

English 301: Writing and the Public Title: Disability and Public Writing
- Description: 5 Credits. This course examines the concept of disability through a social and cultural lens, exploring its intersections with writing studies and the topic of public writing. We will think about what disability means in different contexts as it relates to rhetoric and public actions, such as activism and community building. We will observe that disability has long been a matter of public debate. In a traditional, medical context, we often think about disability as a medical issue, a disorder, or a physical or mental abnormality. As we will observe in this class, these medical definitions are severely limited and often rooted in accepted cultural biases about what is normal and which lives matter more than others. We will examine the ways we think about disability more broadly. What stories and cultural traditions tell us about whether it is good or bad to have a disability? What cultural values and political priorities have brought groups of disabled people together throughout history and still today? These questions will bring us into a much more dynamic and exciting conversation about what disability means, both for ourselves and for the world around us.
- Instruction: Andrew Lucchesi
- Section details: Online Asynchronous, CRN 30616

ENG 401 – Writing & Rhetoric: Disability Rhetoric

ENG 401: Writing & Rhetoric: Disability Rhetoric
- Title: Sr Writing Studies / Rhet Sem: Disability Rhetoric
- Description: 5 credits
  - Disability means different things depending on your point of view. From a medical perspective, disability has to do with the body. From a legal perspective, disability has to do with civil rights. From a rhetorician’s perspective, disability has to do with a wide range of stories, debates, tropes, biases, and identities. Our task in this course is to examine the different ways disability is and has been understood across different contexts. We will examine the growing movement of rhetorical study focused on disability, moving from classical rhetorical traditions to contemporary rhetorics of autism, mental disability, and the disabled body. We will see that in some situations, to be disabled is to be devoid of rhetorical power, to be forbidden from speaking for yourself. We will also see disability claimed as an asset of rhetorical power, a source of authority
  - Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301 or ENG 302 or ENG 370 or ENG 371, or instructor permission; senior status.
- Instruction: Andrew Lucchesi
- Previously Offered: Fall 2021, CRN 44211
- This class can count as an Elective for our Minor in Critical Disability Studies with Advisor/ICDS approval

ENG 418 – Disability & Literature (Senior Seminar)

ENG 418 – Senior Seminar in Disability & Literature
- Description: 5 Credits. WP3. An advanced seminar offering an in-depth exploration of specialized topics. Requires students to develop scholarly projects integrating course material with their own literary, historical, and theoretical interests.
- Instruction: Allison Giffen
- Section details: face-to-face
- Prerequisites: ENG prerequisites and senior status required
- Recent offering(s): Spring 2023 TR 10:00 – 11:50 am, CRN 20415
- Next offerings(s): TBD

ENG 397K – Cultural Disability Studies

ENG 397K: Cultural Disability Studies
- Description: 5 cr; Humanities GUR
  - This course offers an introduction to the key philosophies and scholarly approaches of Disability Studies in the humanities. Students will study literature, film, and everyday texts to understand the concept of “disability” as a social and cultural phenomenon. Through their work in this class, students will develop an increased understanding of disability as a valuable form of diversity. Students will leave prepared to apply Disability Studies ideas and approaches to their future courses in almost any field in the social sciences, humanities, education, and beyond. This course will also provide a comprehensive basis for students interested in pursuing more advanced work in future Disability Studies courses.
- Instruction: English Department Faculty; Andrew Lucchesi
- Previously offered: Spring 2021

ENG 497D – Literature and Disability

ENG 497B: Literature and Disability: Disability in Nineteenth-Century US Literature and Culture
- Description: 5 Credits. This course will introduce you to some of the foundational scholarship in Critical Disability Studies specifically as it pertains to literature and the cultural work of disability.  Focusing specifically on nineteenth-century US literature, we will explore representations of people with disabilities in literature, social perceptions of disability, and the perspective of writers with disabilities. One of the central goals of this course is to explore disability as a social construction and then investigate its fascinating intersections with other identity categories, including race, class, gender, and age. The nineteenth century offers us an especially rich cultural moment when identities like disability, childhood, and blackness and whiteness were becoming codified by way of enlightenment rationality, empirical science, and the nineteenth-century’s drive to classify. We will examine these intersecting and mutually constitutive identities as they are represented in short stories, poetry, and memoir. We will look to primary texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rebecca Harding Dave, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Packard, along with a variety of short stories published in St. Nicholas Magazine, an influential children’s periodical. And, we will read these primary materials alongside such disability scholars as Lennard Davis, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Douglas C. Baynton, Nirmala Erevelles, and Mitchell and Snyder.
- Instruction: Allison Giffen
- Prerequisites: Eng 202 or Instructor permission
- Section details: face-to-face
- Next Offering: Fall 2023, MWF 1:00-2:20, IS 242, CRN 44113.
- This class can count as an Elective for our Minor in Critical Disability Studies with Advisor/ICDS approval

Human Services

HSP 443 – Disability: Individuals and Systems

Leadership Studies (LDST)

LDST 416 – Disability Inclusivity in Leadership

LDST 416: Disability Inclusivity in Leadership
- Title: Disability Inclusivity in Leadership
- Description: 3 credits
  - People with disabilities are diverse in their range of abilities and intersect with every other identity. One in five people has a disability. As leaders, do we know how to be inclusive to people with disabilities in our work? In LDST 416, you will learn the often-untold history of the U.S. Disability Rights Movement and explore the current issues facing people with disabilities. Learn how to be more inclusive in your current and future leadership efforts through the journey of a disability rights activist, diverse essays about disability, and disability sensitivity training. We end the course by exploring a topic you choose related to the future of disability rights through a project. Daman is a national disability rights advocate, entrepreneur, and instructor. As a WWU student, Daman led the effort to create the A.S. Disability Outreach Center. Daman consults on disability topics for organizations small and large, across the country. He now teaches a course on Disability, Diversity, and the Mass Media here at WWU.
  - The course prerequisite is LDST 101, or email morse.institute@wwu.edu for an override.
- Instruction: Daman Wandke
- Previously Offered: Fall 2021, CRN 43344
- Contact: morse.institute@wwu.edu

Religion (REL)

REL 330 – Religion and Disability

REL 330: Religion and Disability
- Description: 5 cr; BCGM GUR
  - This discussion-based course resituates the study of religion within a Critical Disability Studies framework in order to register the prismatic, ambivalent relationships between human variation and religious traditions. By pairing recent scholarship with literature, film, and other textual materials, it foregrounds the ways that, historically speaking, religions have not only structured possibilities for people with disabilities, but also have provided opportunities for disabled people to create alternative lifeworlds and imagine otherwise futures.
- Instruction: Department of Global Humanities and Religions; Kathleen Brian
- Previously offered: Fall 2021
- Contact: GHR@wwu.edu

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS)

WGSS 367 – Feminist Disability Studies

WGSS 367: Feminist Disability Studies
- Description: 5 Credits. This class explores the fields of Disability Studies and Feminist Studies to see what each can bring to the other.
- Instruction: Anika Tilland-Stafford
- Previous offerings:
- Next offering(s): Fall 2023

Courses in development:

CSEC 397x: Disability and Access in the Sciences
- Title: CSEC 397x: Disability and Access: the Academy, STEM, and Universal Design
- Description: TBD
- Instruction: College of Science & Engineering Faculty; G McGrew

For faculty: Have new courses to add to the list? Please use this form: wp.wwu.edu/disabilitycollaborative/courses/add-new/.

Recent Coursework Archive by Quarter

We’ll be keeping a list of our offered courses and their descriptions archived in this section.

Winter 2024

DISA 330 – Critical Disability Studies

DISA 330: Critical Disability Studies – GUR
- Description: 5 Credits. BCGM GUR. This course provides an exploration of the field of critical disability studies. Students will learn about several central topics, including disability rights and disability justice movements, cultural criticism of literature and popular media, and the principles of universal design in physical and digital spaces. Students will explore disability as an identity category that intersects with other identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. This is an interdisciplinary course designed for students from any major.
- Instruction: Kristen Chmielewski
- Section details: in-person Bellingham, TR 02:00-03:50 pm, CRN 13823
- This is a Core Class in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

DISA 350 – Topics in Critical Disability Studies: Disability Moves

DISA 350: Topics in Critical Disability Studies: Disability Moves
- Description: 5 Credits. This course examines disability in dance through investigating choreographers, dancers, educators, and activists. Students will engage in readings, viewings and discussions to culminate in a research project of their choosing. On occasion class may take place in a dance studio environment.
- Instruction: Pam Kuntz
- Section details: in-person Bellingham, TR 10:00-11:50 am, CRN 13822
- This can count as either a Core Class or Elective in our Minor in Critical Disability Studies

ENG 401 – Writing & Rhetoric: Disability Rhetoric

ENG 401: Writing & Rhetoric: Disability Rhetoric
- Title: Sr Writing Studies / Rhet Sem: Disability Rhetoric
- Description: 5 credits. Disability means different things depending on your point of view. From a medical perspective, disability has to do with the body. From a legal perspective, disability has to do with civil rights. From a rhetorician’s perspective, disability has to do with a wide range of stories, debates, tropes, biases, and identities. Our task in this course is to examine the different ways disability is and has been understood across different contexts. We will examine the growing movement of rhetorical study focused on disability, moving from classical rhetorical traditions to contemporary rhetorics of autism, mental disability, and the disabled body. We will see that in some situations, to be disabled is to be devoid of rhetorical power, to be forbidden from speaking for yourself. We will also see disability claimed as an asset of rhetorical power, a source of authority
- Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 301 or ENG 302 or ENG 370 or ENG 371, or instructor permission; senior status.
- Instruction: Andrew Lucchesi
- This class can count as an Elective for our Minor in Critical Disability Studies with Advisor/ICDS approval! Contact icds@wwu.edu

HNRS 350 – Disability Inequality and Advocacy in the United States

HNRS 350: Disability Inequality and Advocacy in the United States
- Title: Honors Seminar – Disability Inequality and Advocacy in the United States
- Description: 3 credits. Historian Douglas C. Baynton writes, “Disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but conspicuously absent in the histories we write.” Building upon that idea, disability is everywhere in society. Ideas about disability shape our language—“the blind leading the blind”—and our insults. Disability provides motivation for villains in children’s movies, like Captain Hook, and moments of tragic catharsis in classic literature, like in Of Mice and Men. Disability shapes educational policies, practices, and curriculum while also affecting employment policies, like subminimum wage and retirement and disability benefits and stipulations. Everyone, if they live long enough, will experience disability at some point in their lives. Disability is everywhere in the United States but is conspicuously absent from most conversations of identity, justice, and equity.
  In this seminar, students explore the historical roots of current issues faced by the disabled community to examine how definitions of disability have changed over time and how current injustices are engineered and enforced rather than inevitable and natural. Each week will focus on a different facet of life—law, education, the medical system, immigration, media representation, recreation, and employment—with one class covering readings and discussion that provide historical context and the other focusing on readings, discussion, and activities related to current issues. The culminating work in the course will be a “Disability Excavation” project in which the students conduct original archival research—either in the WWU archives or online—to trace the history and evolution of a disability issue they have encountered in their own lives or in their field.
- Notes & Prerequisites: Requires admission to Honors College; Jr or Senior status
- Instruction: Kristen Chmielewski
- This class can count as an Elective for our Minor in Critical Disability Studies with Advisor/ICDS approval! Contact icds@wwu.edu

Fall 2023