CENTER FOR “RACE,” CULTURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
COLLOQUIA SERIES A Conversation with Craig M. Rustici, PhD
Professor of English and Director of Disability Studies, Hofstra University
“Handicap Removed”: An Alternative Path to the Social Model of Disability This presentation identifies an expression of a social model of disability from a 1966 film promoting Hofstra University’s Program for the Higher Education of the Handicapped. It traces that model back to books published by the pioneering rehabilitation physician Henry H. Kessler in 1935 and 1947, decades before the earliest expression of that model appeared in the Fundamental Principles of Disability, published by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) in 1976. Ahead of his time, Dr. Kessler questions the concept “normal,” addresses disability stigma, and insists that the “general public” change its handicapping attitudes and accept the person living with impairments as a “natural unit of the common society.” However, in the absence of a cross-disability collective identity and a civil rights frame for contesting discrimination against underprivileged minorities, Kessler’s ideas did not spark the social movement that UPIAS later would. Dr. Craig M. Rustici is the faculty advisor to DREAM Hofstra, the local chapter of Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring. His scholarship includes research into disability activism on the Hofstra campus.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 1-2:25 p.m. (Common Hour) Room 203 Roosevelt Hall, South Campus Free and open to the public. For more information, call 516-463-6585 or email raceculturesocialjustice@hofstra.edu.