No one is completely “normal", and all of us, if we live past fifty, will experience some degree, whether mild or profound, of physical and mental disability. Yet despite the normality of the abnormal, despite that disability is a natural part of the human experience, societies past and present have treated it as something shameful if not horrific.

The Disability Studies program at Pacific tries to understand why physical and cognitive differences have been treated as they have in the past and are in the present, how they should be treated in a twenty-first century democracy, and why.

The Disability Studies minor welcomes students majoring in any of the liberal arts and sciences. For those interested in health care, Disability Studies complements their science courses by focusing on the social, cultural, and political issues in their future careers; and by concentrating on a population of people that many professions are established to serve.

Students majoring in the social sciences or humanities will be interested in Disability Studies’ analysis of the most fundamental ideas of our culture: body and mind, normality and difference, freedom and rights, beauty and wholeness-all of these “abstractions” and their profound importance may become clearer in classes devoted to exploring their impact on our laws, schools, hospitals, beliefs, and day-to-day lives.

The links to the left will help you explore our minor, course offerings and faculty.