The Academic Blog
The Context: When you look back at our work this semester, you’ll hopefully notice a pattern of narrowing scope: Essay 1 asked you to join a conversation about foundational issues of Disability Studies (DS), the big theoretical ideas. Then, Essay 2 tasked you with zooming in on a more specific DS-related topic, something with more focus. Now, Essay 3 takes you even deeper into specificity and focus: you’ll work to connect some particular DS-based issue or idea to another academic context. And the task will require you to draw upon all the skills you’ve developed so far this semester.
The Project: One theme that’s emerged in our readings and work is that, while DS is a popular and growing field, the academic world has been slow to give it respect. That stops here and now. Your project for this essay is to find a way that some specific element of DS intersects meaningfully with a topic in your projected major field of study, and then use that connection to persuade a reader that DS has a worthy place in the field’s discourse. Rather than presenting our material in formal research papers, however, you will be publishing your essay in a digital blog platform — Medium.com
The Process: For your topic, you’ll look for a DS idea (a subgenre, theme, method, trope) and a discipline (your major, a class you’re taking, something you’re curious about). Whichever you start with, you’ll think about both sides of the equation, looking for connections. And as with Essay 2, you’ll need to narrow your focus as you work. Notice how Berubé doesn’t just write about “DS and eugenics,” but the more precise and workable “how genetics influences our democratic sense of belonging to the human race.” You’ll do the same. In order to get to the more specific ideas, you’ll naturally need to research both the DS topic (including primary sources) and the academic discipline (its practices, values, and ways of thinking). I’m not stipulating a specific number of sources; you’ll have to use your best judgment. Just remember that you’ll need enough to understand both parts of the topic and be persuasive to your readers.
The results of all this will be a thesis-driven piece of writing that seeks to convince the audience that your connection between DS and the discipline is meaningful and important. That means it should be specific, taking into account details of the DS topic and the nature of the discipline. And it should be insightful, making the reader think about both sides of the topic in a new way. (This means that a superficial claim like, “People really like DS, so you should use it to get them interested” won’t fly.)
The Product: While the essay will be 1000–1200 words long and driven by a claim, you’ll choose the actual form of your blog, based on what you think would best deliver your specific ideas to the audience of this discipline. Some possibilities:
· You could write a public proposal to encourage readers to adopt a specific plan. (“I propose that the Physics Department could benefit from the creation of a Gen Ed course called “The Physics of Disability Access.”)
· You could write an editorial, such as for a university newspaper or a journal in the discipline, making a claim about the topic. (“The public will never take disability culture seriously until the field starts showing how its ideas connect to pop culture and legal policy.”)
· You could write a thesis-driven essay, like Berubé’s, making a claim situated in the academic conversation. (“Historians have advocated various methodologies over the years, but few if any have seriously considered the scholarly benefits of alternative history stories.”)
These are by no means the only choices, just a sampling of the most obvious ones. No doubt, your research into your chosen discipline will show you other options.
The Audience: Your audience for this assignment are intelligent, educated people who, depending on your essay’s form, could be members of the academic discipline and/or generally interested readers.
