The issue at hand explores the multifaceted portrayal of individuals with intellectual disabilities in media, focusing on representation, stereotypes, visibility, and its impact on societal attitudes and self-perception.

This exploratory essay asks that you continue practicing the skills we have worked on in rhetorical analysis and explore new skills we’ve reviewed related to performing research, demonstrating information literacy, and attempting to synthesize your ideas with those you encounter in research.  

You will explore your disability studies issue and the arguments, opinions, and information around your in-progress research question. You will also identify relevant keywords and work to represent how your research question might be answered by multiple “sides,” as well as work on synthesis by exploring what new ideas unfold when you put your sources into conversation with one another. 

Building from the work you’ve done in previous assignments, work to explore a line of inquiry related to disability studies. This may be a question that you feel is unresolved in one of our assigned readings, or one that is related to your own interests, studies, or curiosities that you have developed independently.   

The goal here is to explore how the particular problem you’ve identified is discussed, debated, potentially answered, and to give some sense of how you are or are not persuaded by the arguments of the sources and the ideas you develop along the research process. This essay is primarily exploratory, and you will use the concepts of analysis, synthesis, evaluation of sources, incorporation of sources into your writing.  Be sure to pay attention to writing and argumentative structures to explore a question that is poised to convince an audience who is most in need of raised awareness around the crisis or problem you are addressing.  

First Draft 

This assignment is meant to function as a working draft in preparation for a final draft. This draft will receive detailed feedback from me, and parts of it will be used for peer review assignments. The goal of this draft is to generate content that will be edited, revised into the final draft 

Tasks 

This draft should be roughly 1000-1250 words and should aim to include the following elements: 

• An introduction paragraph that includes: 

• • Context identifying the topic and subtopic(s)
    
  • A sense of stakes, or why the topic matters 
  • A sense of problem, or your research question 
    
  • Identification of the terms or words at the center of your argument, or keywords 
  • A tentative reasoned thesis statement that makes reference to your research question

• The draft should include work that addresses the rhetorical situation, including some of the following: 

• • Treatment of the audience you are seeking to convince, as well as mention of the specific groups of people that the problem affects. Think back to the groups identified in your topic proposal. 
  • Defensive of the logic of your thesis in an assumption paragraph
  • Expansion of or deeper exploration of the stakes, or things to be gained or lost within the topic 
  • Some deeper treatment of the social and cultural issues that surround, impact, or intervene on the focus of the argument 

• The draft should incorporate 4-6 sources with at least one from our class reading and at least three from your own research. All sources must be scholarly. You should make sure to consider how the author of your source may answer your research question, and how they have (or have not) influenced your own position. The incorporation of sources should work to represent your skills in: 

• • Summary 
  • General Analysis 
  • Rhetorical Analysis and Evaluation 
  • Source incorporation in introducing sources and managing paraphrase and quotations ethically 
  • Information Literacy 
  • Synthesis 
  • If you feel so inclined, treatment of a counterargument 

• Conclude the essay with a reflection on why you think the question remains important and unanswered. In other words, why is there still debate? From your perspective, what’s preventing people from agreeing on a reasonable answer to the question at issue? Do you think there may be a way to get the majority of readers to agree on an answer to the question – why/why not?
  

Requirements to Successfully Complete the First Draft 

• It must be between 1000-1250 words, not including Header or title. 
• It should include a header, heading, and title that adhere to MLA standards 
• It must present a line of inquiry that frames the problem of your topic into a research question 
• There must be clear attempts in the essay to address all four bullet points under the “Task” section. 
• It should be organized like a cohesive essay and be reasonably proofread. 

• It must include a working version of a Works Cited page—do your best, and points will not be taken off for mistakes in citations. 
• As this is a rough draft, I’m not expecting this to fully articulate points of synthesis. However, a clear and obvious attempt must be made to highlight connections between authors’ (would they agree with one another? Disagree? Why?) and to explain how the content in sources is shaping and informing your developing perspective on the topic. 
• The draft itself is not graded. However, you adherence to the tasks laid out in this assignment and submission of your draft will be taken into account with the submission of your final essay.