Collaborative Research Networks
Organizers
Doron Dorfman, Odelia Bay
This CRN invites interdisciplinary and cross-national scholarship on the role of law in the social construction of disability. Disability legal studies locates itself at the intersection of sociolegal studies with disability studies, which focuses on disability as a social and cultural phenomenon, identity, social construct and metaphor. Disability studies emerged as a counterpoint to the medicalized perspectives on disability, and invites scholars to think about disability as a social category on par with race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. This perspective opens disability as a new site of analysis for the social sciences and humanities, examining the ways by which economic relations, cultural meanings, social practices, and institutional settings contribute to the social construction of disability.