Social distancing isn’t new: Disabled and chronically ill people have long navigated the world at a remove. Inaccessible environments, institutionalization, discriminatory social policies, and educational inequities have had profound consequences on how disability communities engage in public life. For these reasons, and more, disability cultures might be best understood as digital cultures, or ways of moving through the world that harness and hack technology for social justice.

In this class, we’ll examine how disabled activists deploy protest tactics online, paying particular attention to histories and pre-histories of online activism (the telephone all the way through dial-up internet) as well as current social media campaigns and digital accessibility advocacy. Among other topics, we’ll think about how disability wisdom might help us better understand (and dismantle!) our so-called “new normal.”

Course Requirements:

Class projects will include short written reading responses on Wordpress, a midterm hashtag/digital activism analysis project, and a final collaborative multimedia project. No prior technological training is required for this class – we will learn together!

Class Format:

Students will have the option to participate in class discussions either synchronously via Zoom or asynchronously via Wordpress.