Title: Common Reading 2023: Sitting Pretty
Audience: First-Year students at Bucknell University
Date: Summer 2023
Software Utilized for the Project: Vyond, Audacity, and Adobe Premier Rush
About the Project: When I began working at Bucknell University in 2022, one of the first things I volunteered to be a part of was the Common Reading selection committee. I was pleased to be successful in advocating for a disability-themed book, Rebekah Taussig’s Sitting Pretty. I also volunteered to create the video that would be posted in the campus learning management system (Moodle).
Dr. Taussig makes it clear that she writes primarily from her perspective as a wheelchair user even as she connects her experience to the broader disability literature. One of my instructional goals is to help students understand that disability experiences are very broad, and they happen all around us even if we don’t see them.
Working with the director of the Office of Accessibility Resources (OAR), we put out a call for volunteers from the Bucknell community to share their disability experiences. Some allowed me to interview them in person, others were more comfortable responding by email. I sorted the responses into categories to show trends for the “Voices of Disability” portion of the video. I also interviewed two professors and the director of the OAR to show other aspects of disability at Bucknell, and then put it all together using Vyond for the animation, and Adobe Premier Rush to assemble the entire video.
In this project, I prioritized sensitivity and anonymity to my participants. While I was concerned the choice to make all participants anonymous may contribute to the stigma of disability, their safety and comfort were my top priority. I did not want them to feel any pressure to disclose.
I sent the almost-finalized video to the participants to confirm they were comfortable with how I represented them. There was some negotiation and changes required before it was truly finalized. I also got their permission to make this video public beyond its intended purpose.
I am pleased with how the final project turned out and hope that it added to students’ common reading experience in a way that has a positive impact on their lives and the lives of those around them.