Students from Michigan State University improved Wikipedia’s content this summer by contributing information related to female filmmakers and authors of color.
As part of Terrion Williamson’s course “Growing up girl: Coming of age in women’s literature and film,” students contributed two new articles and help expand 15.
Highlights include the article on Caucasia, a novel about multiracial sisters growing up in Boston during the 1970s. Student editors expanded that article from 868 to 2109 words.
Students contributed biographies of two authors. One, Connie Porter, is an African-American author of young adult novels. Her entry grew from 232 to 1172 words. An article about Jean Kwok, the Chinese-American writer of the best-selling novel Girl in Translation, is nearly five times larger, thanks to student editors.
The article on the 2008 Randa Jarrar novel about a young girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt, and Texas, A Map of Home, didn’t exist until students tackled it for an assignment. The article is now 660 words long.
Finally, students added sources to an unsourced article about the film Red Doors, about a Chinese-American family in New York.
Thanks to these students for helping to share information about people and stories that are often missing from Wikipedia.
Photo: “MSU Abbot Hall sign” by No machine readable author provided. Lovelac7~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
