Third assignment:
a source-based argument
35% of the Final Grade
Due:   Monday, November 20th



Length:   Write an seven-plus-page argument and include (as a cover letter addressed to the instructor and the class) a one-page memo analyzing both the strengths and weaknesses of your argument.   Do NOT include the cover memo in your seven-plus page count.

Thesis:   In this paper, advance a thesis with regard to the artistic uses recent cinematographers have made of physical or cognitive impairment (see below).

Evidence:   Support your thesis by drawing on evidence from at least four of the films on the syllabus, at least three of the essays in the course reader (excluding Mairs), and from at least one entry in either the N.Y.U.'s "Disability" Film Database or some other online database such as The Internet Movie Database.   You may use other sources in addition to this combination of the four films, three essays, and on-line database.

Goal:   The goal of this assignment is for you to demonstrate ability to use rhetorical appeals clearly, to integrate sources into your argument (using MLA guidelines), to structure an argument effectively, and to carry out an analysis of the argument.   To this end, review chapter eight in Everything's an Argument ("Structuring Toulmin Arguments").   Follow the Toulmin method.   Pay heed to whether your claim is debatable and defensible, to the validity of the reasons supporting this claim, to the soundness of your enthymeme (claim + reason), to the plausibility of your warrants (assumptions connecting claim and reasons), to the sufficiency of your evidence (both backing and grounds), to your judicious use of qualifiers, and to your conditions of rebuttal.

Audience:   Because your first draft will be critiqued in a peer-editing workshop on November 22nd, consider your audience as primarily consisting of your classmates.   For this reason, put your email address along with your name on the first page.   Your peer editors may not have seen all of the films to which you refer, so briefly summarize what is necessary for them to understand your argument.   Assume that they have not read any of the items in the course reader.

General Approach in Selecting a Topic:   Ask yourself some broad questions, such as: what meanings has disability taken on in the films you have seen?   What do the disabled characters come to symbolize?   How has disability intersected with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender?   Think about whose point of view comes across in these films--that of the able-bodied or of that of the disabled, or both.   Have their directors continued to make disabled figures objects of pathos, fear, or exhibition?   Have they created another round of feel-good, inspirational images of impaired individuals overcoming the inadequacies of their bodies and minds?   Or have they used disability as a vehicle to challenge conventional notions of beauty, the body, and normality?

Narrowing the Topic:   Have you detected any trends?   For example:
  • Some of the films place disabled characters "front and center"; others put them off to the side to foreground a caregiver's struggles.
  • In several films, the disabled characters speak for themselves about their condition; in others, they never say a word about what it is like to be disabled.   (Think about voice as a theme.)
  • Three films portray female characters with disabilities.   (How does gender impinge upon the representation of disability?)
  • One film overtly raises issues of race, class, and ethnicity.   (How do race, class, and ethnicity inflect representations of impairment?).
  • In two films, disabled characters marry in the end, but in at least two others, they do not.   (What might marital status say about disability and social inclusion?)
  • While some of the films portray characters with severe cognitive impairment, others feature characters with physical challenges.   (Does watching the former make us more uncomfortable than watching the latter?   Why?   You could discuss how depictions of cognitive impairment differ from those of physical disability).
  • A number of the films feature major actors playing disabled characters.   Does watching Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Daniel Day-Lewis influence our reception of these portrayals?
  • Some of disabled characters in these movies, if they were real people, would be classified as exhibiting a "high level of function."   Others would be describable as "severely involved."   (The question arises: how "disabled" are the disabled in these films.)


From Invention to Writing:
  1. Come up with a topic.   Formulate a main question.   If you have an initial answer to the question, say what it is.   Write a few sentences indicating how you initially plan to go about answering your question.
  2. Write a draft of an introductory paragraph.
  3. Write out a rough plan, forecasting your argument.
  4. Prepare a formal outline, making it as detailed as possible.
  5. Compose a first draft.   This version is the piece of writing you will submit for peer review on Monday, November 20th.


Remember to plan ahead: the first draft of this assignment is due at the beginning of class Monday, November 20th.   Bring (number of copies TBA) to class.


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