What is Disability Studies?

Disability Studies shifts our perspective on a marginalized phenomenon at the center of our experience -- disability – revising what is often misconceived as an aberration of daily life into one of its most basic and formative realities.

In this context, disability is understood as both a social issue and a intellectual framework -- not a medically defined condition. This emerging interdisciplinary field uses “disability” as a lens for thinking about the body, society and culture.

At UCLA, the faculty affiliated with the program in disability studies come from twenty departments or interdepartmental programs across the College of Letters and Science and the professional schools, and they will be joined by others. The current departments involved in the field include Asian American studies, anthropology, applied linguistics and TESL, community health sciences, education, English, health services, history, law, linguistics, neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences, psychology, social welfare, sociology, Spanish and Portuguese, world arts and cultures, urban planning, and women's studies.

Disability studies has a long history at UCLA. For over two decades, administrators and faculty on the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Disability (CACD), now called the University Committee on Disability, have advocated the inclusion of disabilities-related topics as part of UCLA's core academic mission, and urged UCLA to take a leading role in the development of scholarship on disability studies. Under the leadership of the late Jayne Spencer, who served as chair of the CACD for many years, the committee developed a proposal documenting the need for such curricula and calling for the establishment of a committee on disability studies at UCLA.