Models of Disability Reading and Resources List
(Note well: My hope this will be an ever-growing list, as people find their own recommendations, or original works, to add; I was hoping this initial post was going to be longer, but getting lost in the weeds of hunting down the origin of the social model, not to mention the medical model, has stolen my spoons. But I want to have something to post before the end of July)
(Image credit goes to @intervex)
[Based on what I can find, the first listing under each model (Marked by a color emoji, corresponding to its stripe in the flag) will be the first source for the use of that label]
Debility Model:
🔴The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, by Jasbir K. Puar. Duke University Press. November, 2017. [The first 70 pages available as a PDF on the publisher's webpage]
"Disability Identity Work among Student Veterans with Service-Connected Injury" by Heather Powers Albanesi. Disability Studies Quarterly. 4 June, 2025.
"Crip Life Amidst Debilitation: Medicalization, Survival, and the Bhopal Gas Leak" by Jiya S. Pandya. Disability Studies Quarterly. 1 December, 2023.
Affirmation Model:
🟨"Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability" by John Swain & Sally French. Disability & Society. April, 2000. [Published Online 1 July, 2010; abstract only available for free]
Social Model:
(According to the History section of Wikipedia's article on the Social Model of Disability, the "Social Interpretation of Disability" was first spelled out in a 1975 pamphlet put out by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation. But most of the links in the References to that Social Model article have succumbed to link rot. Following the trail of people quoting people, I finally found what I think is a quote from said 1975 pamphlet:
♿"What is Disability?" (A webpage hosted by a cultural trust organization in Sri Lanka, it turns out.)
Political-Relational Model
💚Feminist, Queer, Crip, by Alison Kafer. Indiana University Press. May, 2013
Other:
(To be filled in as we go; I don't think there can be an earliest point for "other")
