You will focus on how, within your discipline, disability is defined as a problem, and what ‘solutions’ are offered to this problem. For example, students in nutrition may look at the issue of ‘obesity’. ECE students may want to explore how children with behavioral issues are presented in their courses and classroom experience. In an entirely different vein, business or technology students might wish to think about how disability is conceptualized when looking at disabled people as a target market or service group. Students from the fine arts or performance studies can think about disability as a subject for representation. If you wish to write about a topic addressed in the Op Ed assignment please connect with me first to ensure you take a new approach to the topic and avoid repeating or plagiarizing the content of that assignment. Instructions: Describe a disability related situation or issue that is relevant to your discipline and provide an analysis of the situation/issue using a disability studies perspective. Please note you may not do a case study for this paper. The point of this paper is to not look at individual circumstances but to look more broadly and to be consistent with a Disability Studies analysis. Please keep your focus and scope somewhat narrow; i.e. do not write generally about inclusion. Provide examples to illustrate your disability problem but not too much that your paper becomes merely descriptive and is not analytical. The following questions will assist you as you develop your final paper: How does my discipline define the ‘problem of disability’? Where does the problem lie? What is causing the problem? (e.g. a medical problem, a problem in the self-control of the individual, a policy problem, a problem of limited resources, poor professional training, poor therapies and so forth). What solutions does your discipline have for the ‘problem of disability’? How is this similar or different from how the course readings define the problem of disability? How do the readings help you see the problem of disability differently? What is good about this? Are there any problems with this? Important: Provide evidence to back up your statements, especially from your discipline. Include quotations from key texts from your discipline; instruction videos; art works, educational materials, trade journals, media representations, academic papers and so forth. References: APA format. You must use a minimum of six references for this paper; at least three references from the course reading list (required and/or suggested) and at least three external sources. Please note that you should be using primarily scholarly references (academic journals, texts etc). You may use video, blog, newspaper, website and other media sources in addition to the minimum of six scholarly references if you wish – be sure to properly cite these sources as well. Do not use Wikipedia as a source at all. Here is a link to OWL Purdue’s APA Style Guide https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/ . Please use this resource to ensure that all of your in text citations and your reference list follow APA format guidelines. If you happen to use any social media sources this guide may also be helpful to ensure you cite properly http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/04/a-great-guide-on-how-to-cite-social.html?m=1 . Some Helpful Tips: · Get specific with your issue or situation – mental health or autism or accessibility are not specific enough. Instead think of a particular situation that relates to your discipline and disability – e.g. accessible playground equipment at preschools; mental health awareness campaigns that focus on fixing individuals instead of on changing intolerant societies; women’s shelters’ willingness to support women who have intellectual disabilities etc. · Once you have a thesis that takes a position on a specific issue, structure your essay to support your thesis by including information on how your discipline generally addresses the specific issue (citing an article or two from your discipline), any ways in which this approach could be problematic from a disability studies perspective, as well as any areas of commonality in how the two disciplines understand and respond to this issue, drawing on readings from the course modules that are relevant and readings from your own discipline’s literature. (This outline is intended as an example – you do not have to follow this structure exactly). · Be sure to include ideas about disability from a few different areas of the course – the models of disability and the concept of ableism may provide a strong foundation but also remember to look at issues related to rights or care or culture or intersectionality etc. You do not have to touch on all the areas we covered – just be sure to talk about disability in ways that acknowledge several of these key aspects. · Remember that The Disability Studies Reader by L. Davis could be a useful resource for your paper. There are many excellent chapters contained in this text that we did not get a chance to read during the course but which may be relevant to the topic you chose for your final paper. · Keep in mind some of the key points, terminology, and language of a disability studies perspective. These include Separation of impairment (lacking part of or all of a limb, organism or mechanism of the body) and disability (oppression, disadvantage and/or restriction caused by societal organization that fails to take into account the diversity of human embodiment) Beware terms such as “suffering from disability” “overcoming disability” “inspiration” etc unless you intend to deconstruct or challenge these terms If you use “disabled person/people” or “people/person with a disability” state your reasons for your choice of terminology using a disability studies perspective. · When thinking about how your home discipline understands and responds to disability in your specific situation/topic you may find it useful to consider questions such as: What barriers need to be removed for people to be more self-determined? Who is seen to need ‘rehabilitating’? How do caring dynamics and institutional policy and practice create disabling conditions? Who gets to be the ‘expert’? How are norms of what is deemed to be acceptable and appropriate preventing disabled people from being ______ (employed, included etc)? My discipline is human biology, so the topic you talk about in this paper could be mental health awareness – the curative narrative of the medical model, how these disabilities are defined and tackled in the medical field. Helpful references https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/?s=intersectionality http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/disability-justice-a-working-draft-by-patty-berne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNMJaXuFuWQ https://eugenicsnewgenics.com/ https://muse.jhu.edu/article/582251/pdf https://medicalizationofchildbirth.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/hubbard1.pdf https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/ https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr;=&id=Oor7avo2iDkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA87&ots=o-cBR6cAlV&sig=PFSPPMVsny1kXdunoB7vQ3AO4Ss&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f;=false