Disability Essay

A short essay in response to Nancy Mairs' article.

ENGL 1301

Miles

 

“Disablity” Short Essay

 

Pick ONE of the following prompts and write an essay in response to it.  Use the standard essay format (intro, thesis, body, conclusion) in organizing your essay.

 

Paper Guidelines: 1-1.5 pages (at least), double spaced, 12- pt Times New Roman font, standard margins.

 

 

  1. Write an essay that explains how your own responses to people with disabilities lead you to accept or dispute Mairs’ call for depicting “disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life.”
  2. Have media depictions of people with disabilities changed since Mairs wrote her essay in 1987? If so, how?  If not, why?  Write an essay in which you analyze current media representations of disability, using specific examples to support your ideas.
  3. Choose another group you think has been “effaced” in television advertsing and programming—a racial, ethnic, or religious group, for instance.  Write an essay detailing why and how that group is overlooked.  How could representations of this group be incorporated into the media?  What effects might some representations have?
  4. Reread this essay carefully.  Mairs tells us about herself through details and through tone (for example, irony, intensity, and humor).  Write an essay on how Mairs’ self revelations do or do not further her thesis.