#227: Learning Through the Arts: Reconstructing Disabled Identities in an Undergraduate Course

Dominant medical-model narratives position disability as deficit. This descriptive qualitative case study examines how arts-based learning in an undergraduate course supported identity reconstruction for three self-identified disabled students at a U.S. research university. Using students’ artifacts and post-course interviews, we traced “reconstruction episodes” marking meaningful stance changes and connections between course encounters and new self-understandings. Findings show students adopted social and cultural perspectives in how they talked about disability, used the arts to make sense of their own experiences and others’, and repositioned themselves as agentic participants in academic and personal communities.