| CODE | DBS3030 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | Hidden Impairments: Private or Public? | ||||||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Disability Studies | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit will enable students to engage critically with issues related to people with hidden impairments and their specific needs. Specific focus on these impairments is important because they are not easily visible and are therefore less well-known and less understood. Consequently, they bring with them particular issues that are not experienced by people who have visible impairments. The study-unit will therefore expose particular experiences of discrimination that these people live through, simply because they happen to have these particular impairments. The impact of hidden impairment and its intersectionality with other areas of discrimination will also be analysed. Local and international research on these experiences will be reviewed together with the students. In this way, the study-unit will provide students with further awareness (and skills to debate) about the complexity of the phenomenon of disability in which the biological is all the time interacting with the social, and the ways in which this increases, or decreases, disability for people with hidden impairments. Students will therefore have the opportunity to debate, in class, specific issues related to hidden impairments, such as whether or not a person with a hidden disability should or should not disclose their impairment to their employer. Apart from identifying the various physical, psychological and social effects for people with hidden impairments, the study-unit will evaluate the different accommodation solutions and related implementation issues that accompany them. Study-unit Aims: 1. To identify specific issues related to the biological aspects of various hidden impairments; 2. To compare and contrast visible with invisible impairments and their specific effects on the person's life; 3. To evaluate the different accommodation solutions and related implementation issues that accompany this impairment group; 4. To analyse the relational aspect of the phenomenon of disability, i.e. the interaction between biological and social and the ways in which such interactions produce or remove disability in the lives of people who have hidden impairments, especially in the presence of intersectionalities with other areas of discrimination. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: a. distinguish between visible impairments and hidden/invisible ones; b. describe common issues that hidden impairments share with other impairment groups; c. list the specific socio-material consequences of having a hidden impairment; d. discuss solutions for the issues mentioned above. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: a. critically analyse the impairment/disability debate in disability studies literature in relation to hidden impairments; b. appraise the shifting, dynamic nature of the phenomenon of disability in terms of the interaction of the biological and social aspects in the lives of people with hidden impairments; c. debate around specific issues related to hidden impairment, such as disclosure, not being believed, having to prove the disability, or being accused of using the impairment as an excuse to skive work; c. explore the impact of other factors, such as sexual orientation, religion, race, that interact with the issues mentioned in the section above. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Essential texts: - The Sunflower Conversations. Podcast. https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sunflower-Conversations/dp/B08LKV5L8G/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2SO7UODQRB8LA&keywords=hidden+disabilities&qid=1685176564&s=books&sprefix=hidden+disabilities%2Cstripbooks%2C146&sr=1-3 - Oliver, M. (2017). Defining impairment and disability: Issues at stake. In Disability and equality law (pp. 3-18). Routledge. - Thomas, C. (2004). How is disability understood? An examination of sociological approaches. Disability & Society, 19(6), 569-583. - Thomas, C. Theorising disability and chronic illness: Where next for perspectives in medical sociology?. Soc Theory Health 10, 209–228 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2012.7 - Hughes, B. (2014). Disability and the body. Disabling barriers and enabling environments, 55-61. - Lingsom, S. (2008). Invisible Impairments: Dilemmas of Concealment and Disclosure, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 10(1), 2-16. Supplementary readings: - Murray, S. (2023). Medical Humanities and Disability Studies: In|Disciplines (Critical Interventions in the Medical and Health Humanities). Bloomsbury Academic. - Santuzzi, A. M., & Keating, R. T. (2020). Managing invisible disabilities in the workplace: Identification and disclosure dilemmas for workers with hidden impairments. The Palgrave handbook of disability at work, 331-349. - Norstedt, M. (2017). Invisible impairments in working life: different perspectives on disclosure. In Nordic Network on Disability Research NNDR 14th Research Conference, Örebro, Sweden (3-5 May 2017). - Roman, L. G. (2009). Go figure! Public pedagogies, invisible impairments and the performative paradoxes of visibility as veracity. International journal of inclusive education, 13(7), 677-698. - Brookes, S., Broady, R. & Calvert, L. (2008). Hidden Disabilities. National Union of Journalists and Disabled Members Council. https://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/library/brookes-NUJ-Hidden-disabilities-Report-plus-Lena.pdf |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Amy Joan Camilleri Zahra Ryan Portelli |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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