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Project Overview
This course culminates with a 3-to-4-minute
disability-conscious research video essay in lieu of a more traditional
literary or cultural analysis paper (!).
The purpose of this final assignment is to advance a critical intervention that
challenges dominant ways of apprehending and interpreting disability. Rather
than fashion a more “positive” account of disability, video essays should tell
a compelling story about the nuances of atypical corporeality obscured by
nondisabled worldviews as rendered in pop culture, media, mainstream films,
narrative art, and prosaic clinical literature, etc. Informed by insights from
disability studies, disabled life writing, and intersectional transformative
justice frameworks gathered from class readings and discussions, you will
employ the medium of digital storytelling to orient non-specialist audiences
toward anti-ableist exchanges with complex disabled embodiment. To promote
visual and cognitive accessibility, all video essays will include subtitles.
You
have two options for developing a focused thematic video analysis:
1.
The first (and
preferred) option involves a careful
review of cultural products/artifacts housed in Gelman’s Special Collections
Research Center OR the People’s Archive at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
(MLK) Library, with sights on contributing selected material for a pop-up
exhibit open to the broader DC community. Bear in mind that the content of one
or more items may prompt a specific research question that helps refine an
analytical narrative (i.e., “The Rhetoric of Compassion in the Advertising
Council’s Mental Retardation Campaign”). [See related primary sources
below]. Ideally, the MLK library will circulate videos featuring materials retrieved
from the People’s Archive on their social media platforms.
2.
The second
option is to produce a video essay
based on a relevant topic of interest: a current event (i.e., Section 504-sit
ins, voting rights, disability representation in a major work or film(s) (i.e.,
the co-constitution of race and acquired cognitive impairment in August
Wilson’s Fences); problems ingredient to special education; senior
citizen homes (disability and geriatrics); a social media campaign or
controversy; disability and employment; disability and sports; disability and
dance; etc.
Fair use “cultural artifacts and products”
related to disability may include (but are not limited to):
●
Activist articles and/or manifestos
●
Advertisements
●
Artwork by a disabled artist
●
Audio and video cassettes
●
Clippings from defunct or current magazines
●
Eugenics pamphlets, speeches, correspondence
●
Major and/or minority-focused periodicals
●
Open-source images
●
Photographed items from permanent or temporary exhibits (when permitted)
●
Protest memorabilia/ephemera
●
Public broadcasting recordings
●
Segments of films or documentaries
●
Segments of novels, short stories, plays, memoirs.
Consider the following questions as you develop your
intervention:
1. How does Disability Studies enable you to anticipate
and challenge prevailing notions about disabled embodiment?
2.
In what ways does
a disability-centered critique of cultural artifacts push you to re-assess your
assumptions about how disabled people navigate worlds designed for others?
3. What do your selected artifacts reveal about cultural
anxieties projected onto nonnormative minds and bodies?
4. When and how do cultural texts/artifacts deploy
“disability” as a metaphor for insufficiency?
5. In what ways do the rhetorics of inclusionism,
compassion, compensation, and nominal accommodation foreclose a
multidimensional understanding of actual disabled embodiment?
6. How do representational treatments of disability reinforce
or unsettle presupposed standards of normalcy and
competency (perhaps they do both). In what manner do these depictions empower
or disempower those with disabilities?
7.
How do your
artifacts or sample(s) of cultural production foreground one or more
marginalized collectivities that congeal with disability, even if just
obliquely: racialized, queer, trans*, gender(ed), impoverished, immigrant,
ethnic, among others? (i.e., the queer d/Deaf community; people of color living
with AIDS)
8.
How do your
artifacts bear witness to the active role people with disabilities assume in
shaping and transforming culture?
Developing Your Digital Story
Recommended Reference: “What is Digital Storytelling?” uploaded by the
University of Georgia Library: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIix-yVzheM
For digital stories, we will adopt a layout evocative of the Kevin
Burns effect, a technique that proffers the illusion of movement between
still images and short video clips through gradual panning, zooming, and fading
transitions. For instance, if you are parsing a specific cultural artifact
(i.e., an advertisement), you can produce a seamless transition by zooming in
on a segment of highlighted text. Here is an excerpt from the “Exploring
Benjamin Franklin” documentary for some inspiration: https://youtu.be/JJtYoq0HH9c?si=BVGGyZF5TON1xiNK. Of course, third person “expert”
interviews are not required!
Required Software: Adobe
Premiere Rush and Adobe Premiere Pro. All students have access to Adobe
Premiere Rush. However, to generate subtitles, students must upload AP Rush
videos to Premiere Pro. Alternatively, students may choose to work exclusively
with AP Pro. Request a Creative Cloud license at the beginning of the semester
via the following link: go.gwu.edu/requestadobecc.
Suggested structure for a digital story:
1. Introduce artifacts and examine noteworthy
elements.
2. Explain the relevance of your chosen
artifacts to Disability Studies
3. Elaborate your intervention:
a. Address the productive tensions within the
DS discipline (i.e., note how a cultural artifact may, at once, depict
disability as a category of disadvantage and bear witness to the
transformative potency of disabled embodiment).
b. Prompt audiences unacquainted with
Disability Studies, Culture, and Justice to recognize overt or subtle ableism
underpinning cultural production.
c. Show how your analysis advances
non-ableist interpretive practices.
4. Conclude with a personal reflection: How
did your exposure to Disability Studies elicit a change in your perceptions of
disabled embodiment? How does a disability-conscious interrogation of cultural
production already constitute an anti-ableist action?
To ensure
successful completion of this project, students must:
1. Select at least two cultural artifacts
placed together around a specific theme. Supplement chosen artifacts with
related images and video clippings to promote smooth transitions.
2. Generate a bibliography citing at
least one theoretical piece assigned in class and one outside source (i.e., an
unassigned chapter in The Disability Studies Reader). Make use of Gelman
library databases to locate pertinent secondary sources!
3. Develop a storyboard displaying all
images and documentary/filmic segments featured in your essay. Provide brief
summaries (1 to 2 sentences) of scripted content accompanying an image or set
of images, then indicate background audio elements for each scene (ambient,
sfx, music, brief speech recording).
4. After drafting and submitting your
storyboard, compose a fully developed script demonstrating critical
engagement with class readings.
5. Ensure that your Voiceover is intelligible
and of sound quality (pun intended).
6. Include subtitles devoid of
grammatical errors. Yellow
font is best for legibility .
Make sure your subtitles are in sync with your narration.
