2024 Go Big Read panel offers space for sustainable disability discourse on campus

“The experience of disability is wide, and deep, and sprawling, and can look like a lot of different things … it’s important for us to have that space to share with the community,” said Rebekah Taussig, the author of “Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body,” which was the 2024 Go Big Read at UW–Madison. According to UW–Madison’s 2024-25 University Disability Access and Inclusion resources, disability inclusion and accessibility is a shared responsibility between everyone within our community. Offering campus-wide dialogue for students, faculty and staff to engage in disability discourse is a critical part of collectively fostering inclusive spaces at UW, engaging different perspectives on how our built and academic environments can better accommodate for sustainable, disability-friendly infrastructure and resources on campus. 
Audience member holds the program for “An Evening with Rebekah Taussig” during the Go Big Read keynote conversation in Varsity Hall. Photo by Althea Dotzour / UW–Madison

An audience member holds the program for “An Evening with Rebekah Taussig” during the Go Big Read keynote conversation in Varsity Hall. Photo by Althea Dotzour / UW–Madison.

As part of fostering disability discourse on campus, UW’s Go Big Read program curated a series of events, including panels, book discussions and an author keynote event, for students, faculty and community members to engage with disability access through Taussig’s memoir, “Sitting Pretty.”

Disability discourse with 2024 Go Big Read

“Sitting Pretty” invites readers to consider how disability and access play a critical part of who we are collectively and individually. Taussig takes readers on a journey, recounting personal stories and experiences of living in a body that doesn’t quite fit in. Reflecting on the ways of living with a disability, Taussig details the intricacies of fostering accessibility in spaces of intimacy, education and community. “Sitting Pretty” encourages us to rethink our relationships to disability as a natural and integral part of being human. Indeed, considering disability and accessibility measures in collective spaces is just the start. “Access is a way of life, a relationship between you and the world around you,” Taussig writes. “It’s a posture, a brief about your role in your community, about the value of your presence.” Taussig hoped her book encourages readers to understand disability as an experience that is a part of what makes us unique to and different from one another. Finding the language and community to share these experiences with is not always easy, but “Sitting Pretty” tells us, “you’re not alone.”

Continuing the conversation

Students and faculty panelists with the Madison Public Library Go Big Read: Panel on Disability events shared their experience with Taussig’s book and disability access more broadly at UW. “This book gives us language and words to talk about disability with greater confidence and community,” said Miso Kwak, panelist and PhD candidate in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education. The events’ panelists discussed Taussig’s narrative as one voice in an expansive community of rich and unique experiences and representations of disability. The panelists encouraged the audience to think broadly about how disability shapes the experiences of those who are not traditionally represented, but who provide unique and necessary perspectives to creating an accessible world. Accessibility means something different for everyone, student panelists said, but it begins as a shared responsibility that must be incorporated into every facet of our lives — including the social, academic and built environments of our university. Sadie Derouin, a project manager at the Office of Sustainability, is responsible for integrating sustainability principles into campus facility and infrastructure projects. In an interview, Derouin said that integrating accessibility conversations early on in the planning stages of UW’s built environments is critical to creating inclusive environments.  “A lot of that happens in the very early planning,” Derouin said. “There’s laws and requirements for standard building design to have certain accessibility features in place … a lot of that work [is done] up front in their planning, knowing the student population that’s going to be accessing their facility, and what sort of unique needs they may have. Fostering inclusive environments and spaces for shared accessibility dialogue promotes greater disability access and inclusion in large-scale institutions like our own, faculty panelist Roben Mota said. Forefronting disability voices and dialogue in our academic and social spaces ensure these conversations are a priority from the very beginning. “When we design with accessibility in mind, everyone benefits,” Taussig said at the disability panel. “When we build with disability in mind from the beginning, we will build a world for all of us that’s better.” By: Catie Stumpf