APA Committees

Law, Society, Difference

Identity/US Cultures Studies

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

Note from the Author: This upper-division course is designed to fit into a sequence of philosophy courses on medical ethics, 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 syllabus 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 elderly, 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 liberation 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. Participatory and Distributive Theories of Justice
3. Equality and Difference
4. Sex, Gender and the Social Construction of the Body (Theory of Embodiment)
5. Biological Determinism, Haplotype Mapping, 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
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 - Rawls v. Sen and Nussbaum)
10. Disability Rights: Protection Against Discrimination (The Americans With Disabilities Act, The U.K. Disability Discrimination 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. Right To Life, Right To Die and Quality of Life Assessments
14. 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 Environment," Journal of Social Philosophy 23 (1)
*Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999,"What Is the Point of Equality?", Ethics, v. 109, n. 2, January, 287-337.
*Arneson, Richard. 2000, "Disabiity, Discrimination, and Priority," in Leslie Francis and Anita Silvers, eds., Americans with Disabilities: Implications of the Law for Individuals and Institutions. New York: Routledge.
Asch, Adrienne and Michelle Fine. 1988 "Beyond pedestals" from Fine, Michelle and Adrienne Asch, eds. Women with disabilities: Essays in psychology, culture and politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
*Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. "Psychological Oppression" from Femininity 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.
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)
Davis, Lennard. 1995. Enforcing Normalcy, New York: St. Martins).
*Du Bois, W.E.B., excerpts from "The Souls of Black Folks" in Three Negro Classics. Avon Books.
*Engel, David and Frank Munger. 2003. excerpts from Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans With Disabilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fanon, Frantz. 1967. excerpts from Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1995. "Madness, the Absence of Work" in Critical 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
Leal-Idrogo, Anita, Judith Gonzales-Calvo, and Vickie Krenz (eds.), 1996 Multicultural Women: Health, Disability, and Rehabilitation. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.
*Lott, Tommy. 1992. "Du Bois on the Invention of Race" in Philosophical 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.
*MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2000, "The Need for a Standard of Care", in Francis and Silvers, Americans with Disabilities
*Mill, Charles. 1999, The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Minow, Martha. 1990. excerpts from Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law. Cornell University Press. Ithaca and London.
Morris, Jenny. 1991. excerpts from Pride Against Prejudice. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.
*Nussbam, Martha. 2002. Chapters 1 and 2 from the Tanner Lectures: Beyond the Social Contract, "Social Bargains and Problems of Justice" and "Capabilities and Disabilities: Justice for Mentally Disabled Citizens"
*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, "Women and Disability" in The Blackwell's Companion To Feminist Philosophy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
1998, "How Can Women With Disabilities Be Feminists?" in Feminist Approaches To Bioethics, ed. by Anne Donchin and Laura Purdy, New York: Rowman and Littlefield
*1999, "Aging Fairly: Feminist and Disability
Perspectives on Intergenerational Justice", Mother Time: Women, Aging,
and Ethics, ed. Margaret Urban Walker, Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Little-field,
*2002, "Disability Rights" in The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press
*Silvers, Anita and Michael Stein, 2003, "From Plessy (1896) and Goesart (1948) to Cleburne (1986) and Garrett (2001): A Chill Wind from the Past Blows Equal Protection Away", in Backlash Against the ADA: Reinterpreting Disability Rights, ed. by Linda Krieger, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Silvers, Anita, David Wasserman and Mary Mahowald, 1998, excerpts from Disability, Difference Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Wendell, Susan 1989. "Toward A Feminist Theory of Disability", Hypatia, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer
*1996. excerpts from The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections On Disability. London: Routledge.
*Williams, Patricia. 1991 excerpts from The Alchemy of Race and Rights Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Young, Iris Marion.
*1990 a. excerpts from Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1990 b. excerpts from 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.
*2000 "Disability and the Definition of Work" in Francis and Silvers, Americans with Disabilities
SUPREME COURT CASES
ALBERTSONS, INC. v. KIRKINGBURG [98-591]
CHEVRON U. INC. v. ECHAZABAL [00-1406]
CLEBURNE v. CLEBURNE LIVING CENTER, INC. [473 U.S. 432]
GRATZ v. BOLLINGER [02-516]
GRUTTER v. BOLLINGER [02-241]
LAWRENCE v. TEXAS [02-102]
PGA TOUR, INC. v. MARTIN [00-24]
US AIRWAYS, INC. v. BARNETT [00-1250]
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: two seven page papers based on Case Studies, and either a ten to fifteen page final paper or an analytic journal of ten to fifteen pages based on community service learning placement.
GRADING: A through F and Cr/NCr.

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