The sociology of disability has emerged relatively recently as a subfield in sociology and has seen growing institutionalization within the field, including the establishment of a section in the American Sociological Association. The field, however, is still emerging. There is not yet an American journal dedicated to it or more than a few textbooks. The small set of professors in this field, therefore, experience both the opportunity and the challenge of constructing the essence of the field when they teach. In this study, we draw on 25 syllabi from sociologists teaching the sociology of disability and a broader set of disability courses to examine four elements of the syllabi—course description, learning goals/objectives, course topics, and readings—to assess the presence and content of an emerging core for the discipline. For each element, we analyze the thematic range and level of agreement across syllabi. We find that professors resist relying solely on sociology, instead embracing interdisciplinary scholarship and prioritizing the voices of people with disabilities. Syllabi show little overlap in readings or authors. The highest level of agreement is found among the course descriptions and topics, especially with regard to the sociological perspective and the key concepts of sociology such as social institutions, culture, theory, and inequality.

残疾社会学作为社会学的一个子领域相对较新地出现，并且在该领域内的制度化也在不断发展，包括在美国社会学协会中设立了一个部门。但是，该领域仍在兴起。尚未有专门针对它的美国期刊或几本教科书。因此，该领域的一小撮教授在教书时既经历了机遇，也面临着挑战，要建立该领域的本质。在本研究中，我们从社会学家的25个教学大纲中选拔了残疾社会学，并从更广泛的残疾课程中研究了教学大纲的四个要素-课程描述，学习目标/目的，课程主题和阅读材料-评估了存在和该学科新兴核心的内容。对于每个元素，我们分析了整个教学大纲的主题范围和一致程度。我们发现，教授们拒绝仅仅依靠社会学，而是接受跨学科的学术研究，并优先考虑残疾人的声音。Syllabi在阅读或作者中几乎没有重叠。在课程描述和主题之间，尤其是在社会学观点和社会学的关键概念（例如社会制度，文化，理论和不平等）方面，人们的共识程度最高。