Courses in Disability Studies are taught by Texas Center for Disability Studies faculty and staff and are currently offered through the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin. The course number for each course is SW 387R for the graduate level and SW360K for the undergraduate level class.

Text:   You will have readings for the course made available to you by the Texas Center for Disability Studies. They will be uploaded on the Blackboard Web site. You can either read them online or print a copy.

Format: This course will be conducted entirely on the Web, using software called “Blackboard.”  This software is fully accessible, but if you have difficulty in using a screen reader to access any information on the Web site, please contact the instructor as soon as possible. According to university policy, if you need any accommodations to successfully complete this course, you must notify the instructor of your needs in advance.

Course Objectives:
The purpose of this course is to deeply explore the unique issues, concerns, and experience of being a woman with a disability. To that end:

• The student will understand both disability and gender as socially- conferred statuses, not fixed attributes, of the individual.

• The student will identify how attitudes and beliefs about disability and gender may impact the personal and social view of disability.

• The student will identify and discuss some of the specific issues that influence women with disabilities.

• The student will examine the complex interplay of social, political, and economic forces as they relate to women and disability.

• The student will examine the complex interplay of culture, gender and disability in the concerns, issues and experience of women with disabilities. 

• The student will understand the longstanding social oppression of the disability community and of women, and consider ways to initiate social change.

Schedule:

Syllabus lesson: This lesson will orient you to the structure of the course, the software we'll use for the course, as well as elements of learning online.

Lesson 1: In this lesson, we work to understand the importance of considering the multiple statuses of gender and disability by exploring issues related to stereotypes and limited role allocation for people with disabilities.

Lesson 2: In this lesson, we work to understand the concept of women with disabilities as “sexless” by understanding the experiences of women with disabilities as they grow up and develop relationships, both with friends and with romantic partners.  We will examine how different types of disabling conditions impact the formation of relationships, including sexual relationships, in order too understand the sexual issues and experiences of women with disabilities.

Lesson 3: We focus on two aspects of women's roles: reproduction and caretaking, and how those roles, or the lack of roles, affect women with disabilities.

Lesson 4: This lesson focuses on work, and how roles related to work are limited for women with disabilities.

We will also have two projects in this class; one related to cultural images of women, and another related to the personal experience of women with disabilities, both designed to give you opportunities to apply your learning.

Requirements:
This course is designed in a Web-based environment that gives us a certain kind of flexibility in creating learning opportunities for you. The course is designed to give you some flexibility in choosing how you best learn, and what topics are of primary interest to you, within a structure. Each lesson will last two weeks. There is one "project" that will last one week. At the beginning of each lesson or project, there is a "map" to tell you all of the learning activities for that lesson. Some of the activities will be required, and some will be optional. The map will clearly state what you need to do to complete that lesson, but if you have any doubts or questions, be sure and ask the instructor.

Grades:
You will acquire points by doing the tasks associated with each lesson. Each lesson has basic requirements equivalent to the time you would physically spend in a classroom, plus the time you would normally spend outside the class doing readings or working on papers.  Each lesson clearly states how many points you can earn, and the grade per point total. There are different point requirements for the graduate and the undergraduate students. There will be points for doing the project, during the project week. There are no mid-term or final exams, only quizzes at the end of each lesson, and activities to support your learning.