This article provides an overview of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. It highlights the social model of disability, a foundational analytic framework within disability activism, practice, and scholarship. Through explicating and historicizing the emergence of disability as a social category, the article offers the social sciences an emancipatory lens through which to reflexively examine and dislodge disabling assumptions and practices. The article concludes by illustrating how disability studies can complement and expand the social justice orientations of contemporary social science research and practice.