Courses Designed to Meet General Education Requirements

Identity/US Cultures Studies

PHILOSOPHY 340
LAW, SOCIETY, DIFFERENCE
Dr. Anita Silvers -- Dept. of Philosophy
San Francisco State University
415-338-2420

Note from the Author: This upper-division course is designed to fit into a sequence of philosophy courses on law and social philosophy. Courses in this sequence are suitable for elective credit for the philosophy major. But they are mainly taken for general education credit by students in a variety of majors. This course complies with the upper division requirement for a course that illuminates the situations of members of nondominant groups - racial and ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, gays and lesbians, the aged, the poor. It is called a Cultural, Social and Ethnic Diversity requirement.

The cases we discuss vary from semester to semester. The press is full of them. So are the e-mail lists I subscribe to. These latter alert me to which disability groups respond most vociferously to each issue that turns up in the press, so I can be sure to include a variety of cases that highlight concerns of people with different kinds of disabilities.

It is important as well to understand that the course brings together students with somewhat different interests in disability. There are students with disabilities, students whose family members are disabled or aging noticeably, students who have family histories pre-disposing them to disability, students who are majoring in fields concerned with disability, students headed for law school, and then the general run of student looking for a philosophy or a general education course that fits her schedule.

My objective is to prepare these students to acknowledge and conceptualize disability, whether their own or others'.
Anita Silvers asilvers@sfsu.edu

PHILOSOPHY 340 LAW, SOCIETY, DIFFERENCE
COURSE OUTLINE

Some philosophies of release from group-based oppression call for assimilation; others for diversity. This course explores the moral, social, legal and phenomenological correlates of diversi ty, focusing on disability and the "double differences" at the intersects with race and gender.

1. Competing Paradigms of Liberation

2. Competing Theories of Justice

3. Equality and Difference

4. Sex, Gender and the Social Construction of the Body (Theory of Embodiment)

5. Biological Determinism and the Social Construction of Race

6. The Medical Model of Disability - The World Health Organiza tion Definitions of Disability

7. The Social Model of Disability - The Influence of Foucault

8. Disability Rights: Entitlements and Exemptions (S.S.D.I., I.D.E.A., The Rehab Act)

9. Disability Rights: Enhancing Capabilities (Distributive Jus tice - John Rawls vs. Amartya Sen)

10. Disability Rights: Protection Against Discrimination (The Americans With Disabilities Act, The U.K. Disability Discrimina tion Act)

11. Affirmative Action and Non-Discrimination: Protections Against Race-Based and Sex-based Oppression

12. W.E.B. DuBois, Racism and The Double-Consciousness

13. Moral Phenomenology and the Experience of Disability

14. Right To Life, Right To Die and Quality of Life Assessments

15. Personal Identity and Minority Group-Differentiated Identity

READING (Required Reading Marked by "*")

* Case Studies Reader supplied by the instructor

*Amundson, Ron. 1992. "Disability, Handicap, and the Environ ment" Journal of Social Philosophy 23 (1)

Asch, Adrienne. 1986. "Real Moral Dilemmas", Christianity and Crisis, 46, no. 10 (July 14, 1986)

Asch, Adrienne and Michelle Fine. 1988 "Beyond pedestals". In Excerpts from Fine, Michelle and Adrienne Asch, eds. 1988. Women with disabilities: Essays in psychology, culture and politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

*Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. "Psychological Oppression" from Femi ninity and Domination. London: Routledge.

*Excerpts from Baynton, Douglas. 1997 Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language. Chicago: Univers ity of Chicago Press.

Excerpts from Bickenbach, Jerome. 1993. Physical Disability and Social Policy. University of Toronto Press. Toronto and London.

Excerpts from Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight. Berkeley: University of California Press

Buchanan, Allen. 1996. "Choosing Who Will Be Disabled: Genetic Intervention and the Morality of Inclusion" in Social Philosophy and Policy. Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1996)

Excerpts from Davis, Lennard. 1995. Enforcing Normalcy New York: St. Martins).

*Excerpts from Du Bois, W.E.B. "The Souls of Black Folks" in Three Negro Classics. Avon Books.

Excerpts from Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Foucault, Michel. 1995. "Madness, the Absence of Work" in Criti cal Inquiry, Vol. 21, No. 2, Winter 1995. *Frye, Marilyn. 1983. "Oppression" from The Politics of Reality: Essays In Feminist Theory. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.

Galler, Roberta. 1984. The myth of the perfect body. in Carole Vance, ed. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Hammersmith, England: Pandora Press.

*Hahn, Harlan. 1987. "Civil Rights for Disabled Americans: The Foundation of a Political Agenda" in Images of the Disabled, Disabling Images, ed. by Gartner, Alan and Tom Joe. Praeger. New York.

Kent, Deborah. 1977. "In Search of Liberation" in Disabled USA 1:3

*Excerpts from Leal-Idrogo, Anita, Judith Gonzales-Calvo, and Vickie Krenz (eds.), Multicultural Women: Health, Disability, and Rehabilitation. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.

Lott, Tommy. 1992. "Du Bois on the Invention of Race" in Philo sophical Forum, Vol XXIV, Nos. 1-3, Fall-Spring 1992-93.

Miles, M. 1996. "Community, Individual or Information Develop ment? Dilemmas of Concept and Culture in South Asian Disability Planning. "Disability & Society Vol. 11 (4), pp. 485-500.

*Excerpts from Minow, Martha. 1990. Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law. Cornell University Press. Ithaca and London.

*Excerpts from Morris, Jenny. 1991. Pride Against Prejudice. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.

Excerpts from Ruffino, Norma Carr. Managing Diversity

*Sen, Amartya. 1984. "Rights and Capabilities" in Resources, Values and Development, Oxford: Basil Blackwell

*Silvers, Anita. 1994. 'Defective' agents: equality, difference and the tyranny of the normal. The Journal of Social Philosophy's twenty-fifth anniversary issue, June. * 1995a. Reconciling equality to difference: caring (f)or justice for people with disabilities. Hypatia, Special Issue on Feminist Ethics and Social Policy, edited by Patrice DiQuinzo and Iris Marion Young, Winter 1995, Vol. 10 1995b. "Damaged Goods: Does Disability DisQALYfy People From Just Health Care?" in The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 102-111, 1995 * 199-, "Women and Disability" in The Blackwell's Companion To Feminist Philosophy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. 199-_, *"How Can Women With Disabilities Be Feminists?" in Feminist Approaches To Bioethics, ed. by Anne Donchin and Laura Purdy, New York: ROwman and Littlefield * 199_, "Disability Rights", in The Encyclopaedia of Applied Ethics, edited by Ruth Chadwick. London: Academia Press * 199_, "Genetic Intervention and the Compulsion to Normalize: Allocating Resources To Restore 'Species-Typical' Functioning" Wendell, Susan 1989. Hypatia, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer "Toward A Feminist Theory of Disability" * 1996. Excerpts from The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections On Disability. London: Routledge.

*Excerpts from Williams, Patricia. 1991 The Alchemy of Race and Rights Cambridge: Harvard University Press

*Excerpts from Young, Iris Marion. 1990 a. Justice and the Polit ics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1990 b. Throwing Like A Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1997 "Assymetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged Thought" Constellations Vol. 3, No. 3, 1997, pp. 341 - 363.

I will provide you with copies of those of my essays which have not yet appeared in print. These are the essay whose publication date is marked as "199_".

COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Participation in break-out Case Study Discussion Groups, two short papers based on Case Study Discus sion Groups, and a ten to fifteen page final paper.

GRADING: A through F and Cr/NCr.