New Disability Rights Course this Fall

Disability Studies is a relatively new interdisciplinary academic field that examines disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon. HUMRTS 104: Introduction to Disability Studies and Disability Rights is a new course offered this Fall by the Handa Center, and is included as a course in the Human Rights Minor.  

This is an introductory course that aims to investigate the complex concept of disability through a variety of prisms and disciplines including social psychology, the humanities, legal studies, and media studies. This course also focuses on the multiple connections between the study of disability and other identities including class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, and also includes a comparative look at how disability is treated across cultures. 

Some of the topics covered in the class are disability and the family, the history of the disability rights movement, the development of disability identity and its intersectionality, antidiscrimination law, the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, bioethical dilemmas pertaining to disability, and more. 

HUMRTS 104 will be taught by Doron Dorfman, a JSD (Phd in Law) candidate at Stanford Law School and a PhD Minor candidate in the Program for Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University. He has devoted much of his time and efforts to the promotion of the rights of people with disabilities gaining both practical experience and academic knowledge in this field. His scholarship covers a variety of topics like welfare policies, parenthood and reproductive rights for people with disabilities and the implementation of disability antidiscrimination laws across cultures and societies. Doron's scholarship has awarded him multiple awards such as the Steven M. Block Civil Liberties Award, the James Crane III Disability & the Law Writing Award and the Perla & Samuel Rubinstein Scholarship for Disability Studies and Universal Design.