One Campus, One Book
Finding common ground through a shared reading experience. This year, "Disability Visibility" edited by Alice Wong will serve as the starting point for discussions about inclusion, accessibility, ableism, disability representation and amplifying disabled narratives.
Upcoming Events
Oct 14, 12-2 PM | The Stories We Tell: a Disability Visibility Workshop
UAS Egan Library Room 211 & Zoom
Workshop participants will explore their lived experiences through writing. Generative prompts will be provided to help jump start creativity. Whether through poetry, personal essay, song or other forms, let’s reflect on disability visibility. What stories do we have to tell about ableism, identity, intersectionality, culture, media, and politics from the perspectives of those living with a disability? Everyone has an interesting story to tell. Open to anyone who self-identifies as living with a disability and (their) allies. See the Events section below for more information. Please register.
2023-24
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong is the One Campus, One Book Selection for AY 23-24.
Complimentary print and ebook copies will be available for UAS Students at Orientation and the Egan Library (while supplies last).
Complimentary student copies are made possible through funding support from UAS First-Year Experience and UAS One Campus One Book.
Complementary copies may be available to community members beginning mid-September (while supplies last) at the UAS Libraries (Egan-Juneau, Ketchikan Campus Library) and Ketchikan Public Library.
Additional copies (print , ebook, audiobook) are available at the Egan Library and library locations throughout Juneau and Southeast Alaska.
Three Sample Essays (shared with UA users only)
Disability Visibililty Anthology Discussion Guide by Naomi Ortiz
Disability Visibility Anthology Plain language summary by Sara Luterman.
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
“As a Deaf Asian American, it wasn't until recent years that I started considering myself disabled. This is a very informed starting point for anyone who, like myself, would like to get a better understanding of disability as a massive and beautifully nuanced spectrum.” —Christine Sun Kim, artist
Listen to a sample:
[Embedded Soundcloud audio player]
Alice Wong
“Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society.” –Alice Wong
Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist, writer, media maker, and consultant. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture. Alice is the editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, an anthology of essays by disabled people and Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today, an adapted version for young adults. Her debut memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life is available now from Vintage Books. Disability Intimacy, her next anthology, will be out in 2024. Twitter: @SFdirewolf.
[Image Description] Digital portrait of Alice Wong, an Asian person smiling. She is wearing a trach at her neck and wearing a crew neck blouse. She is sitting in her power wheelchair. There is a cream colored circle crown on a purple background. Artist credit: Jen White-Johnson
Events
Everybody Storytime with Janalee Gage
Sep 23, 10:30 AM| Ketchikan Public Library
Councilperson and Disability Rights Advocate Janalee Gage will join KPL Youth Services Staff as a special guest for storytime.
The Stories We Tell: a Disability Visibility Workshop
Oct 14, Noon-2 PM | UAS Egan Library Room 211 & Zoom
Workshop participants will explore their lived experiences through writing. Generative prompts will be provided to help jump start creativity. Did you know, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability? Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Whether through poetry, personal essay, song or other forms, let’s reflect on disability visibility. What stories do we have to tell about ableism, identity, intersectionality, culture, media, and politics from the perspectives of those living with a disability? Everyone has an interesting story to tell. Attend one or both workshops. Open to anyone who self-identifies as living with a disability and (their) allies.
UAS is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please contact Jonas Lamb, j.lamb@alaska.edu, 907-796-6440 to request disability accommodations (e.g., sign language interpreters, alternative formats). Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.
Documenting Disability Experiences
Oct 26 & Nov 16, 6-8 PM | UAS Egan Library Room 211 & Zoom
Did you know, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability? Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Come learn about the Disability Visibility Project and how to conduct and record an interview to reflect on your past, present and future through a conversation centered on the disability experience. Participants have the option of submitting their stories to the growing archive of disability culture and history. Attend one or both workshops. Open to anyone who self-identifies as living with a disability and (their) allies.
UAS is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please contact Jonas Lamb, j.lamb@alaska.edu, 907-796-6440 to request disability accommodations (e.g., sign language interpreters, alternative formats). Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.
Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health Exhibit
February 1-29, 2024 | UAS Egan Library
Over the past 200 years in the United States, a tension has existed between care and custody as responses to mental health issues. Physicians, psychiatric survivors, families, and government agencies have all shaped mental health policies. Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health examines history to understand how the country has moved away from custodial forms of treatment, sought a more inclusive society, and worked to protect the rights of people with mental health conditions. Care and Custody is a travelling exhibit curated from the collections of the National Library of Medicine and features six graphic banners. An online exhibit and educational resources are also available at the link below. The Juneau exhibit will be available during regular library hours.
Meet Alice Wong, Editor of Disability Visibility
Agents of Inclusion: A Special Olympics Podcast
Resources
Disability Visibility & Support Resources
- UAS Disability Services: Disability Services (DS) empowers, supports, and advocates for students who experience disabilities by partnering with the UAS community in the provision of equal access to all curricular and co-curricular programs, facilities, services, and activities.
- Southeast Alaska Independent Living (SAIL): SAIL empowers seniors and people with disabilities by providing services and information to support you in making choices that will positively affect your independence and productivity in society.
- Carleton University’s Disability Research Group: An interdisciplinary Canadian team from a wide range of scholarly and professional backgrounds. The group presently includes two engineers, a defence scientist, a social worker, a librarian, an independent living specialist and several historians investigating the ways in which disability studies, technology and history interrelate, largely through researching and designing virtual exhibits. Sample exhibits using the links below.
- Disability Visibility Project: an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.
- Disability Visibility Anthology Plain language summary by Sara Luterman
- Disability Visibililty Anthology Discussion Guide by Naomi Ortiz
- Disability Visibility Podcast Resource Guide
- Disparate Minds: an ongoing interdisciplinary project dedicated to increasing visibility for and discussing the work of marginalized self-taught artists in a contemporary context. Through their research, writing, lectures, and curatorial projects, Donahue and Ortiz share insight informed by extensive experience working at the intersection of art and disability as practicing artists, artist facilitators, dedicated disability rights advocates, and most significantly in building and co-managing a studio for eighty self-taught artists with developmental disabilities in Nevada.
- The History of the Americans with Disabilities Act: A Movement Perspective by Arlene Mayerson
- Disabled And Here: a disability-led stock image and interview series celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC). Free & inclusive stock images from a disability perspective, with photos and illustrations celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC). All images are openly licensed for free re-use.
- Interviews with Disabled And Here Collaborators
- The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Project (UC Berkeley)
Program Information
Out of recognition that integrating One Campus, One Book selections into UAS courses takes time, two books will be announced each selection cycle.
2023-24: Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today by Alice Wong.
2024-25: Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes
Previous One Campus, One Book Selections
Information about previous OCOB selections and links to audio/video when available.
2022: Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change by Bren Smith
2021: An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo
In collaboration with the Juneau Public Library's NEA Big Read Grant programming, events were held throughout the year around town and online.
Big Read Juneau Kickoff, in-person event at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum (Fall 2021) during which visitors explored the exhibit "Echoes of War” which told the largely ignored story of Unangax̂ people who were forcibly removed from the Pribilof islands and held at Funter Bay in Southeast Alaska from 1942-44 while listening to a recorded soundscape of Harjo poems read by 17 volunteer Alaskan readers (Poetry in the Air). The poems and the exhibit both spotlight the history of forced displacement of Native people. The event received press coverage and was featured in a story by KTOO, "Juneau poetry event spotlights forced displacement of Native people."
A Most Powerful Song, virtual panel featuring Indigenous poets Vivian Faith Prescott, Marie Tozier and X’unei Lance Twitchell. Participants read from their work and discussed poetic lineage, the influence of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and the importance of increasing visibility of Indigenous people and poetry. The event was moderated by Sol Neely (Fall 2021). [Video Archive]
UAS Open Mic Night @ Auke Bay Cafe, in-person event co-sponsored by UAS Student Housing (Fall 2021).
An American Sunrise: Southeast Alaskan Writers Celebrate the Work of Joy Harjo, in-person event at the Alaska State Museum co-sponsored by 49 Writers (Spring 2022). [Video Archive]
2020: If Our Bodies Could Talk: Operating and Maintaining a Human Body by James Hamblin
Invited speaker, James Hamblin, discussed his work as a public health professional and author in the midst of a global pandemic. The conversation included questions from participants and was moderated by Jonas Lamb [watch]. Complementary ebook (from Google Play, while supplies last).
2019: Cancelled
2018: Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream by Joshua Davis
Invited speaker, Oscar Vazquez, one of the teenagers whose trials and triumphs are documented in the book, visited with UAS classes (Spanish), had a luncheon with the UAS Student Veterans and Family Association and provide the afternoon keynote, "La Vida Robot, STEM, and Immigration"during the Power & Privilege Symposium. [watch]
Campus screenings of the feature film, Spare Parts and the documentary Underwater Dreams, illustrated how the boys left an enduring legacy that has inspired generations of young Latino advocates to raise their voice on issues of immigration, the DREAM act and equitable access to STEM education.
Spare Parts author, Joshua Davis, recorded a welcome video for incoming UAS students. [watch]
2017: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandell
UAS partnered with the Juneau Public Libraries on their NEA Big Read Grant. An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. Station Eleven served as a starting place for a community wide conversation on the themes of remembering and coping with historical trauma through cultural and artistic forms, boosting community knowledge of emergency preparedness and infectious disease prevention, and promoting kindness and respect for different perspectives despite humans’ sometime violent and intolerant nature. Fewer events were hosted on campus this year due to the abundance of community-wide events held by JPL and other Big Read partners.
Dr. Micaela Martinez, Assistant Professor at the Columbia University, New York, UAS Biology and Math Alumna gave the lecture: The Clockwork of Epidemics, Health & Disease.
Two films interpretting future worlds (Mad Max and The Circle) were screened on campus. A game night featuring the board game, Pandemic was held in student housing as were weekly book discussions.
UAS created a website for the project [view the archived website]
2016: Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories
Invited speaker, Christina Gomez, co-editor of Mixed visited with 3 classes on the Juneau Campus (Humanities, Spanish, Sociology) and had a lunch time conversation about educational journeys, graduate school, advocacy and passions with the UAS students in the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP).
Gomez participated and lectured as part of the 1st UAS Power and Privilege Symposium on November 9th, 2016 and gave the talk, "The Act of Dreaming: Undocumented Students in the United States."
Gomez also gave the One Campus, One Book lecture, "Negotiating Identity in America" as part of the Evening at Egan series on November 11th, 2016.
2015: Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir by Ernestine Hayes
“One of the most important books to come out of Alaska. There have been other great memoirs by Alaska Natives, but few if any have been made with such disarming humor, such bravery and such warmth.” --The Anchorage Press
Hayes' visited 15 classes on the Juneau and Sitka campuses, attended a reception in her honor held by the UAS Honors Program and participated in 3 community events culminating in her Evening at Egan Lecture, "An Animate World", Nov. 6th, 2015.
Hayes moderated the panel, "The Making of Never Alone" an interdisciplinary discussion focusing on the video game, Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna), winner of the 2015 British Academy Games Award: Best Debut. The panel featured cultural ambassadors Ishmael Hope and Amy Fredeen and a team from E-Line Media appeared via video (Matt Swanson — Producer, Ian Gil — Lead Designer, David Koenig — Technical Director, Casey McDonnell — Art Director). The discussion raised the question, how can new media platforms be used effectively to tell traditional stories in order celebrate indigenous language, contribute to decolonization efforts and share a vibrant, in-tact culture with younger generations?
Hayes' donated the pre-publication Blonde Indian manuscript and author's correspondence to the Egan Library. It can be viewed online in ScholarWorks@UA. Access to original manuscript materials are restricted to in-library use at the University of Alaska Southeast Egan Library and requires pre-approval from a reference librarian. Researchers are encouraged to use the online version of this collection.
Blonde Indian was selected by Alaska Writer Laureate, Frank Soos and the Alaska Center for the Book as the inaugural selection for Alaska Reads 2016, a statewide celebration of Alaskan literature. Hayes' travelled extensively throughout the state during the month of February and free copies of Blonde Indianwere distributed to public libraries courtesy of the Alaska State Library.
In March 2016, Hayes was featured on "The Artist" @ 360 North. The event was recorded and rebroadcast later on 360 North public television and on YouTube. Additional info about "The Artist @360". [watch]
Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness an exhibition on loan from the National Library of Medicine was hosted @ Egan Library September-December 2015
The Juneau Public Library collected interviews on campus as part of their StoryCorps grant “Every Voice Matters: Recording and Sharing Alaska Native Educational Experiences”. UAS students and faculty facilitated interviews at the Egan Library. Recordings will be available on CD at the Juneau Public Libraries in Summer 2016. Select interviews from the project can be streamed from KHNS (Haines, AK Public Radio).
2014: Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck and Ricketts scholar Katie Rodger visited the Juneau campus for a series of class visits, reception and an Evening at Egan Lecture, 'Discovering Science: Finding the Story', Oct. 10th, 2014.
Artist and socio-ecological activist Colleen Flanigan visited the Sitka and Juneau campuses for a series of class visits and presentations on Merging Art and Environmental Sciences.
2013: At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson
Kij Johnson visited the Juneau campus for a series of class visits, the one-night only production of a staged reading and an Evening at Egan Lecture.
UAS Drama Club S.C.R.I.P.T performed "Finding True North", Nov. 6th 2013
Kij Johnson presented and Evening at Egan lecture, Egan Library, Nov. 8th, 2013
Narrative Endeavors: Visual and Literary Art Exhibition. One night only student art show with open mic and Google Hangout with Kij Johnson. Downtown Gallery, April 4th, 2014.
John Marzluff, author of Gifts of the Crow: How perception, emotion, and thought allow smart birds to behave like humans presented a different perspective on this year's OCOB theme of human-animal communication and communicating with the other at a Sound and Motion Lecture on April 18th, 2014.
2012: Being Caribou by Karsten Heuer
Karsten Heuer and Leanne Alison visited the Juneau campus for a series of lectures, film screening and classroom visits. Gwich’in elder Randall Tetlichi was elder-in-residence on the Juneau Campus and gave another perspective on related themes.
Gwich’in elder Randall Tetlichi presented an Evening at Egan lecture, Egan Library: Nov. 9th 2012 [watch ]
Leanne screened the related film, Egan Lecture Hall followed by a Q&A, Nov. 15th 2012 [watch]
Karsten presented an Evening at Egan lecture, Egan Library, Nov. 16th 2012 [watch]
Sarah Ray, OCOB 2012 Committee Chair
2011: The Truth About Stories by Thomas King
2010: Listening is an Act of Love by David Isay
One Campus, One Book is the common reading program at UAS-Juneau. It's a celebration of literature and the relationships and communities that develop between readers and writers. Discussing a common book can also provide a safe venue for beginning difficult dialogues. The program grew out of the Student Success Forum with the goal of helping foster community and compassion on campus. The program's first year (2010) featured David Issay's Listening is an Act of Love and a corresponding campus oral history project ( The UAS Listening Project) collected the stories of students, faculty and staff. In 2012 the program was formalized as a program of the Egan Library, a selection committee established and in 2013 these program goals and criteria were adopted.
Goals
The UAS One Campus, One Book program will:
- Begin an exploration of interdisciplinary approaches
- Create opportunities for learning in and out of the classroom.
- Foster student, staff and community participation and identification as contributing members of an intellectual community.
- Promote reading and "foster a page-turning togetherness".*
*based on DC We Read 2009
The One Campus, One Book (OCOB) program aligns with the mission and goals of the UAS First Year Experience (FYE) Program to support academic success and persistence, ease educational and social transitions to college, and foster student engagement in the UAS Community. OCOB activities incorporate two FYE student learning outcomes:
First year students participating in OCOB activities will:
- Develop a strong network of peers and professionals including:
- One faculty member they consider a mentor
- One staff member they feel can offer support
- Five peers that are conducive to their social and academic success
- Develop strong connections to the UAS campus by attending at least five events on the Don't Miss List
Criteria for book selection
- The extent to which the book matches program goals (touches on interdisciplinary perspectives and has the potential for integration into curriculum, is not too challenging in terms of reading level or topic).
- Has the potential for a variety of related program (themes).
- The book won’t have likely been assigned reading during high school.
- Accessibility: The book is between 250-350 pages in length, engaging, college-level reading and not a text-book
- Accessibility: is available currently in paperback
- Accessibility: bulk ordering of the book won’t require a reprint of the title.
- The author may be available to visit campus (within our modest budget).
Planning and Selection Committee
Please email committee chair, Jonas Lamb (uas.ocob@alaska.edu) if you are interested in participating on the committee or for information about the next selection.