Disability Rhetoric

1. Title: The “Monster” Within: An Analysis of Disability as “Monstrous” in Literature
2. Central Question: In early literature, monsters or monstrous figures were often caricatures of disability. These caricatures led to generalizations of disability that when replicated led to widespread misunderstandings of how disability is experienced and perceived. How did early literature characterize disability and what are the modern repercussions?
3. Product Design: I will be creating the beginnings of a thesis essay, estimating 15-20 pages of research and analysis of literary works and modern interpretations. Many of the literary works will come as a result of the analysis portions, provided by the Disability Studies Quarterly journal and academic essays published by universities.
4. Production Plan: This product will be a result of hours of research and culminating analysis which will have to be done over a long stretch of time. I plan to meet with the professor on either the 10th or the 17th to present initial findings and the general structure of the essay. The work-in-progress will hopefully be the second or third draft of the thesis, with only minor adjustments and citations to be added.

Proposed Schedule:

November Week 1: Outline and First Draft of Sources

November Week 2: First Draft of Content -perfect citations

November Week 3: Second Draft of Content: After meeting with professor and finalizing Chicago Style sources at the RWS

November Week 4: Third Draft and Final Edits

5. Consultation: I will hopefully be in contact during several points of the essay, but mostly using the professor as a touchstone of major ideas. I tend to get carried away with either too much research or too much analysis, so getting feedback on whether I am finding a good balance will be helpful. This will likely come after the first draft of the essay.

Special Questions: Thinking of formatting of research and analysis, I think that it is best to go via topic vs. via source (ie: multiple sources on the topic of mobile disability vs. analyzing Shakespeare, then Hugo, then Wordsworth, etc.) Would this be preferable for an academic paper? Is it considered too “passe” if my “modern perceptions of disability” look at how Disney has taken literary stereotypes and morphed them further? Or should I just be looking at how the stereotypes are repeated in modern literature?

6. Citations: I have about 20 gathered right now, not that I will use all of them. But these are some I have come across.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Disability, and the Injustice of Misrecognition https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/7109

Aesthetic Traces in Unlikely Places: Re-visioning the Freak in 19th-Century American Photography https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/613 

Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People https://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/library/Barnes-disabling-imagery.pdf 

Disabled Literature—Disabled Individuals in American Literature: Reflecting Culture(s) https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/58432/1/574.pdf