Until recently, the academy has enjoyed relative consensus regarding the nature of disability. All disciplines taking note of disability--including health professions, education, the social sciences, and the humanities--treated the phenomenon as an empirically measurable limitation in functioning, linked to an underlying physiological deficit or impairment, that prevents a person from performing (or appearing) typically. More recently, scholars have added perspectives that illustrate how disability emanates not from physiological or cognitive difference in isolation but in interaction with social values, practices, and structures. Instead of treating disability as simply inherent in individuals, the field of disability studies transforms the understanding of disability from an individual deficit to a complex byproduct of social, environmental, and biological forces. This perspective illuminates how individuals designated "disabled" are treated collectively in a manner that diminishes their economic, interpersonal, psychological, cultural, political, and physical well-being relegating them to membership in a socially disadvantaged group.

The UIC PhD program in Disability Studies promotes the development of new scholarly models with respect to our comprehension of disability. The study of disability is contextualized by the social, cultural, and historical dynamics that have identified an array of human differences as exclusively detrimental. Part of this transformative intellectual approach involves the education of disabled and non-disabled academicians, researchers, policy experts, and clinicians who will join with disabled people in the community as active challengers of oppressive institutions and environments. The program examines how addressing disability in its full complexity can promote the full participation, self-determination, and equal citizenship of people with disabilities in society.

In order to achieve these goals, UIC's disability studies program recognizes disability as a complex phenomenon existing at the intersection of human differences and social values.The PhD program in disability studies promotes an awareness of disability that supports individuals in shaping their identities and lives. Moreover, the program examines how services that support persons with disabilities along with social and political change can reduce sources of disempowerment.

The PhD program in Disability Studies at UIC is open to any scholar who is committed to studying how disability "works" and what can be done to lessen the negative personal and social consequences of disability. This includes the study of what disability reveals about society and humanity as well as how it affects people who fall both within and outside of the category.

Scholars from any discipline can engage in disability studies. A particular strength of the UIC Disability Studies program is access to diverse faculty mentors and resources in the health fields, the social sciences, and the humanities. Students in the program conduct research across impairment, clinical, social, cultural, ethical, and policy perspectives. The program recognizes the inherent tensions that exist between therapeutic, medical, and social models of disability, but acknowledges these differences as fertile ground for the development of Disability Studies as an integrative knowledge base. Because the program has faculty, researchers, and students with backgrounds in health, education, assistive technology, the social sciences, and the humanities, Disability Studies at UIC offers a unique opportunity to study the full complexity of disability in its multi-layered, interactional dynamics.