Disability and Sexuality: Politics of Desire and Desirability

Disabled people have been variously understood as undesirable, as subjects who do not desire, or as people whose desire is dangerous and perverse. In this course, we will excavate the origins of these understandings and develop new ones through a “cripping” of sexuality. The “normalization” of disabled sexuality through disciplinary regimes, and the ways disabled people have challenged them, will be a central theme. The course will utilize texts from both queer theory and disability studies, understanding the ways disabled sexuality pushes against normative expectations of proper sexuality. From the eugenic logic controlling the reproduction of the “feeble-minded”; to discourses of consent and agency surrounding intellectual disabilities; to interdependency, care, and disabled intimacies; to queer crip theories of kink, we will take disability as a crucial lens into the constitution of modern understandings of “sexuality” itself.