Grants:Project/NCTE/CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2021-22/Profile

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Dr. Melanie Kill - CCCCWI Founding Chair & Project Lead (User:Drkill)

Dr. Kill founded the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative (CCCCWI) in 2019 and is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching focus on digital rhetorics, rhetorical genre studies, technofeminism, disability rhetorics, and the public humanities. She has been editing and teaching with Wikipedia since 2007. In 2011, she was a Wikimedia Summer of Research Fellow and served on the Wikimedia Research Committee. Her current book project offers a rhetorical analysis of the ways Wikipedia both carries forward and modifies the genre of the encyclopedia. Dr. Kill has many years of experience organizing edit-a-thons, facilitating editing workshops, and introducing both students and scholars to Wikipedia's technical, procedural, and cultural practices.

Savannah Cragin - CCCCWI Wikimedian-in-Residence (User:Breadyornot)

Savannah has been working with the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative since December 2020, bringing with her several years of Wikipedia editing and teaching experience. Savannah received her B.A. in Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and is currently pursuing her MLIS at San Jose State University. She has worked alongside the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Privacy (IRGP) at the University of California, Berkeley to increase awareness of cybersecurity and surveillance issues on Wikipedia as both an Undergraduate Research Fellow and Wikipedia Coordinator. Additionally, she has worked with the American Cultures Center at UCB as their Wikipedian-in-Residence to assist instructors with Wikipedia-based assignments.

CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows

Abir Ward (User:AbirWard)

Abir Ward graduated with a PhD in English: Composition and Applied Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in May 2022. She accepted a position at Boston University to teach English Language Learners (ELL) at the College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program. Ward previously taught at the American University of Beirut where she founded 2Rāth, a social justice initiative engaged in the politics of representation. The project started in 2019 by recognizing a need to create articles about Lebanese and Arab authors, poets, and literary figures from Lebanon and the Arab region who have little to no presence on the web and are at risk of becoming forgotten in today's digital age. 2Rāth seeks to bridge the gender gap in representation by creating articles about notable female Arabs and to combat Wikipedia's gender gap by partnering with Art + Feminism; it has since garnered over 20 million views for its work. Ward was the recipient of the CCCC Wikipedia fellowship in 2021 and the Middle East Partnership Initiative grant from the US Department of State, both of which helped her propel the work of 2Rāth forward. She organized the first Wikipedia Edit-a-thons in Lebanon and the Middle East, and she has partnered with Wikipedia Education to help train Wikipedia student editors in Lebanon.

Alexandra Krasova (User:Sashaalexa)

Alexandra has been engaged with Wikipedia since 2020, and in 2021 she became a Wikipedia fellow working on editing and translating the articles on digital composition, digital literacy, teaching writing, digital storytelling, and multimodality. Alexandra is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on multilingual students and the use of digital storytelling in the English classroom. Alexandra's main projects included presenting at the Computers and Writing Conference at East Carolina University in May 2022 and hosting WikiProject Writing's February Content Development Spotlight to increase the representation of female scholars in academia.

Andrew Yim (User:Ayim93)

Andrew is the current assistant writing center director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and is also working on his Ph.D. in Composition and Applied Linguistics at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His main areas of research are on writing centers, multilingual writers, transfer, and the first-year writing classroom. He first become more involved in Wikipedia editing after making revisions to St. Augustine's Wikipedia page for a class. He is currently finalizing a journal article, alongside 2 co-authors, that looks at to what extent Wikipedia editors have a sense of their ownership when editing.

Katie Bramlett (User:Katlett)

Katie Bramlett joined the faculty of California State University East Bay's Department of English after earning her PhD in English-Language, Writing, and Rhetoric from the University of Maryland. Bramlett teaches writing courses and is the Writing Across the Curriculum director. Her research interests include Asian/American rhetoric, public memory, cultural rhetoric, women's activism, and disability studies. Bramlett used Wikipedia as a learning tool in three separate courses that she team-taught with Dr. Melanie Kill throughout the 2021-2022 academic year. Additionally, she presented at the Computers and Writing Conference, hosted a Wikipedia tutorial on Twitch, and created a Wikipedia Spotlight for the WikiProject Writing in May 2022 on Asian/American rhetoric, writing, and activism.

CCCCWI Committee Members

Dr. Sweta Baniya (User:Swetabaniya) - Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech
Dr. Charles Bazerman (User:Cbazerman) - Professor, UC-Santa Barbara
Dr. Dana Comi (User:Dcomi) - Assistant Professor, Auburn University at Montgomery
Dr. Dylan B. Dryer (User:Compositionist) - Associate Professor, University of Maine
Dr. Tarez Samra Graben (User:Rhetorica19) - Associate Professor, Florida State University
Dr. Alexandria Lockett (User:JaneNova) - Assistant Professor, Spelman College
Dr. Matthew Vetter (User:Matthewvetter) - Associate Professor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania