DIS/CEP 300 – Disabilities Studies: Discovering Abilities, Narratives, and Identities (Community Engagement Practicum)

Formerly CEP 201 – Practicum Critical Disabilities Studies – Discovering Abilities: Narratives, Disabilities and Identities

General Practicum Description
In this practicum students will work with professional assistants at “I ragazzi del sipario”, a restaurant whose working staff members are people with intellectual and/or sensorial disabilities. Workers also have a workshop that produces hand-made goods for sale in a shop. Students will help professional workers in their activities in the restaurant or the shop. Also, students will learn how to relate to people with disabilities and observe how they deal with the challenges of a real enterprise. The seminar meets once a week and is based on the students’ journals about their work, readings and discussions. The seminar will focus on the ways in which people with intellectual disabilities can integrate and be included in the social and work world through an empowering environment. We will also study the stereotypes surrounding disabilities in Italy, and how they spread through specific narratives in the media.

Learning Outcomes
On completion of the practicum, students will be able to:
– Know the challenges for people with mental disabilities to integrate into the work environment.
– Show experience trying to overcome those challenges.
– Identify and analyze disempowering and empowering narratives and environments in their own experience.

Course descriptions may be subject to occasional minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.

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