Submissions:2016/“Making Your Own Worlds”: The Changing Educational Goals of The LaGuardia WikiProject Octavia E. Butler

Title

“Making Your Own Worlds”: The Changing Educational Goals of The LaGuardia WikiProject Octavia E. Butler

Theme

Education

Academic Peer Review option

Yes

Type of submission

Presentation

Author

Ximena Gallardo and Ann Matsuuchi

E-mail address

doctorxgc@gmail.com

Username

Doctorxgc; Mozucat

Affiliation

City University of New York-LaGuardia

Abstract

"You got to make your own worlds. You got to write yourself in. Whether you were a part of the greater society or not, you got to write yourself in. So I got to write myself in."--Octavia E. Butler explaining the centrality of writing to her identity on Charlie Rose

This presentation will focus on the continuing goals, methods, and outcomes of the LaGuardia WikiProject Octavia E. Butler, a collaborative effort of community college undergraduates, Butler specialists, and volunteer Wikipedia editors to craft thorough, rigorously researched, well-written encyclopedic entries for Butler’s fiction as well as writing successful research essays on Butler’s fiction. Specifically, we will explain how researching and editing entries on Butler’s work has doubled over time as a means for our community college undergraduates to, as Butler has said, “write [themselves] in” as part of the “greater society” that Wikipedia supposedly represents. LaGuardia WikiProject Octavia E. Butler began in Spring of 2014 with the collaborative editing of the entry for Butler’s best-selling Kindred, the project now encompasses student work on articles for the novels Fledgling and Wild Seed as well as the biographical entry for their author. In February 2016, a meeting of Butler scholars and Spelman College honor students contributed to the project by creating and revising the articles for the novels comprising the Patternist series—Patternmaster, Mind of My Mind, Survivor, Wild Seed, and Clay’s Ark—during a three-hour Wikipedia edit-a-thon hosted by the Octavia E. Butler Society and Spelman College. During 2016, LaGuardia undergraduates will be focusing on expanding the entry for the short-story and essay collection Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Length of presentation

20 minutes

Special schedule requests

No

Preferred room size

Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

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