25-26 Common Read: Disability Visibility

College Transition Programs and the Feminist & Gender Studies Department are excited to announce that the 2025-26 Colorado College Common Read is Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century, edited by Alice Wong. Copies are available for free at the CC Bookstore with your Gold Card!

In Disability Visibility, Alice Wong brings together writers, thinkers, and activists with disabilities in this groundbreaking anthology, which introduces new scholars to critical disability perspectives. The essays in Disability Visibility reflect on how intersectional systems of power inform the livelihood of us all—disabled and (temporarily) abled alike.

As new students transition to CC, Wong’s collection helps readers reflect on their own body and life as they live and learn in Colorado Springs. Fun fact: about 32% of our student body works with Accessibility Resources. That includes students with temporary disabilities, too: concussions, mobility impairments, and other embodied states where access needs may change. These essays, which center critical disability consciousness to reflect on everything from climate change to human-animal relations, speak to the importance of care and community.

We are also pleased to announce this year's Common Read Speaker, Dr. Jina B. Kim. Jina B. Kim is a scholar of feminist disability studies and queer of color critique. She is an Associate Professor of English and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College in Northampton, MA. Her new book, Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing, demonstrates how and why we need radical disability politics and aesthetics for navigating contemporary crises of care. Jina's work has appeared in Signs, Social Text, GLQ, American Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, Disability Studies Quarterly, and The Asian American Literary Review.

Please join us for her keynote lecture, Care at the End of the World: Healthcare Infrastructure and Wild Disability Justice Life-Writing, week 2 of Block 4. Further details will be announced later this semester.

You can learn more about the text through the Tutt Library LibGuide. If you are a member of a department, program, or office hosting programming related to the Common Read and would like your event added to the website, please contact Brett Gray: bgray@coloradocollege.edu.