LATS 475
Dreaming Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies Spring 2025
Division II W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed WGSS 475 / AMST 413

In this course we defy the notion that disabled and queer people of color have no right to future dreams, as we collectively imagine how the emergent and contestatory field of Latina/x feminist disability studies might take shape. Feminist, queer, and disabled crip-of-color scholars have recently called for a more meaningful engagement with race in feminist disability studies. Simultaneously, we have also witnessed a small but steady growth in the amount of Latinx studies scholarship that thoughtfully integrates questions of disability not solely as an identity category, but rather more expansively, and ultimately as more reflective of societal power relations. This interdisciplinary course responds to these important shifts in its focus on a series of topics bridging Latinx studies, gender studies, queer studies, crip studies, and critical disability studies. Via themes such as the body, the environment, temporality, labor, citizenship, dependency, visibility/invisibility and others, we explore the ways in which the different approaches to these specific issues across Latinx, critical disability, crip, ethnic, queer and gender studies are in fruitful conversation with one another — and sometimes even at odds — as we actively interrogate the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability within the everyday. What are the sites of focus, methods, and political commitments of Latina/x feminist disability studies? Where is the power in meaningfully uniting an analysis of disability to one of sexuality and gendered Latinidad? How does a Latina/x-centric approach productively inform our understanding of disability? What is the political potential of Latina/x feminist disability studies — not exclusively as a set of theories, but also as a mindset and an everyday call to action? If we were to collectively compose a manifesto for Latina/x feminist disability studies, what might it contain? How might we cultivate a community of care in institutional spaces, even in the face of the ongoing pressure to produce? Just what might Latina/x feminist disability justice dreams look like? How might Latina/x feminist disability justice dreams feel?