Svjetlana Timotic and Veronica Mitro gave a lecture on Feminist Disability Studies, within the third cycle of Women’s Studies in Subotica in the Modern Gallery on May 27, 2023. The lecture is part of the thematic block of marginalization of women. A group of students attended the event, and the others listened to the lecture online. Students actively participated and directed the lecture course.
The summary of the lecture is as follows. The universities have been studying persons with disabilities within medical and health curriculums and comprehended disability as a deficit that needs to be mended. The movement for the rights of persons with disabilities laid the foundations for the development of disability studies by shifting the focus from individual deficit and pathology (medical model) to socially constructed barriers (social model). The same as women’s studies, Afro-American studies, and other domains of the liberation movement, disability studies say that the unaccepting society is the thing that needs to be normalized and not the marginalized groups. The problem lies in the fact that disability studies are unaware of feminism, while on the other hand, the feminist theory doesn’t consider disability as part of the identity that forms a category of women. Feminist issues related to disability- such as reproductive technologies, the role of body differences, specific traits of repression, the ethic of care, and the subject construction – are looked upon without taking disability into account. Feminist disability studies introduce gender into disability studies, respectively disability into feminist theory. Feminist disability studies are scholarly and cultural work that enlightens social outcomes of gender differences and cross-examines cultural strengths and repercussions of those differences in the community of persons with disabilities.
The following terms were explained during the lecture: medical model, social model of disability, respectful disability language, disability studies, and feminist disability studies.
Photo: M. Antunovic
