The discussion topic this week focuses on social issues of disability and ableism. Consider and respond to the following. Be sure to draw from and cite required readings as well as your own personal and professional experiences and other sources of knowledge. Describe the application of community psychology action and research tools to address issues related to disability and ableism within a global context. Issue main post is due by Day 5. If needed: Balcazar, F., & Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2017). Promoting empowerment among individuals with disabilities. (In course readings)Balcazar, F. E., & Suarez, B. Y. (2016). On Becoming Scholars and Activists for Disability Rights. American Journal of Community Psychology, 58(3/4), 251–258. McDonald, K., Raymaker, D., & Gibbons, C. M. (2017). A call to consciousness: Community psychology and disability. In M. A. Bond, I. Serrano-García, C. B. Keys, & M. Shinn (Eds.), APA handbook of community psychology: Theoretical foundations, core concepts, and emerging challenges., Vol. 1. (pp. 403–419). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

This week we are going to be working on one of the last big parts of our researched literary argument: the literature (or lit) review. For this assignment, we will be breaking down what a lit review is, the purpose of a lit review, and how to write a lit review. I will also be providing an example of what a sample lit review looks like. (For some of you this information may be review, but for some of you this may be new. STEP ONE: Review the following relevant materials. A Lit Review: What is it? A standard lit review is a a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research. Conducting a literature review involves collecting, evaluating and analyzing publications (such as books and journal articles) that relate to your research question. A lit review most often appears as the first body paragraph of your essay, right after your introduction. For our purposes, the lit review for your researched argument essay, the lit review will only contain information about your anchor source (the main source for your essay), so this means that it would cover either just the novel, just the movie, or be a combination lit review of both the novel and the movie. For the rest of your sources, those should be introduced to your audience the first time you mention them in your essay. The Purpose of It: Why Do We Write a Lit Review?When you write a thesis, dissertation, or research paper, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly contextDevelop a theoretical framework and methodology for your researchPosition yourself in relation to other researchers and theoristsShow how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debateYou might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps.Most importantly, we write a lit review to introduce our audience to the anchor text, or the source that is the main basis and focus of our argument. (This is also why for our purposes, you lit review will only focus on the one source if you are using the book or the movie, and two sources if you are focusing on the book and the movie.) The Meat of It: What Goes in a Lit Review? Your lit review needs to establishes and explain your anchor source's main points in a body paragraph. It should summarize the source's argument, claims, and evidence; this may include relevant plot points and the overarching thesis of the work. Discuss the relevant ideas of the source as if you were explaining them to someone who was unfamiliar with the text. The second half of your lit review needs to both explain the intended audience of the work, the tone used by the author/director, and the author or director's purpose of creating the source as well as a rhetorical analysis of the successfulness of the source. Make sure to state why this source is successful or not. Remember when you are writing your lit review, you should connect the source back to your focused research question(s) and/or your thesis. What Should My Lit Review Look Like? This is an example from a student who completed a different assignment, but this example is a successful integration of all parts of a lit review that focuses on Cohen just like yours should. This lit review covers all seven theses in "Monster Culture," but yours will only focus on Thesis 1 and Thesis 4. PRO-TIP: Go back to the worksheet you filled out for Breaking Down Cohen, all the information that you wrote down on that worksheet should appear somewhere in your lit review. Example: Before embarking upon our characterization of Godzilla, we must first characterize Cohen's argument. His essay claims that examination of a given monster's traits may yield insight into the cultures they inhabit. Cohen supports his dissertation with his seven theses, which are each complex and weighty enough to exist independently as an argument in its own right. Since seven is confusingly excessive, weshall focus upon his most relevant theses, of which there are only four. The first thesis we shall examineis Cohen's Thesis 2, which states that a monster's existence is based upon its indestructibility. Themonster eludes our understanding and can even be invoked as a perceived connection to immediate socialissues. Thereupon, the surmised threat the monster poses is through its mutability and difficulty tocombat. The monster's mutability is key as we move into Cohen's Thesis 3, which contends that monstersare dangerous because they are “full of rebuke to traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experiences (Cohen 7). Its challenge to our cultural understanding becomes something simultaneously discomfiting and perilous. Similarly unnerving is the alien-ness of the monster: in Thesis 4, Cohen claims that monstrosity comes through difference in culture, which is often specified racially, economically, or sexually. True to form, the monster threatens to erase difference in the world of its creators, thus revealing the fragility of the established system (Cohen 11). The final Cohen thesis we will inspect is Thesis 5, which dictates that the monster serves to warn against curiosity and reminds us not to test the limits set in place by our encompassing culture. These theses individually examine various essentialmonstrous characteristics and determine how each monstrosity challenges the mores or understandings unique to each culture. In support of his theses, Cohen invokes a plethora of examples originating from mythology, history, wordplay, and even current day practices. He then makes his point by emphasizingthe way the monster infringes upon the traditions established by its respective culture. Although Cohen'sargument ultimately weakens because of his somewhat recursive methodology of occasionally moldinghis monstrous exemplars within distinctive cultural characteristics, his essay provides a fresh outlook fora reader with an interest in cultural studies. Freshly and adequately armed with Cohen's methodology, wecan now examine Godzilla against the backdrop of Japanese culture and history to find the reason for hishalf-century reign as King of Monsters.VIDEOS:If you need more clarification on lit reviews, I've put the following videos together in support. While these videos cover lit reviews that focus on more than one text, they share the same basis as a singular source lit review. What is a Literature Review? Explained | ScribbrOutlining Your Literature Review's Structure | ScribbrHow to Write a Literature Review | WordviceSTEP TWO: Write Your Lit ReviewBased on the previously covered materials, write a lit review for Cohen for your Essay 3. STEP THREE: Submit Your Lit Review to this Submission LinkSTEP FOUR: Add your Lit Review to the next draft of your essayGo to the current draft of your essay that you are working on and add this lit review you have just created as the first body paragraph in your document.