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Trump admin trying to ‘erase’ trans people, professor says
University of California Berkeley students have made more than 300,000 Wikipedia edits on LGBTQ history through one professor’s courses.
Ethnic studies and gender and women’s studies professor Juana Rodríguez teaches “Documenting Marginal Lives,” “Queer of Color Cultural Production,” and “Queer of Color Critique,” according to The Daily Californian.
Starting in 2016, Rodríguez has had students write and edit Wikipedia entries about LGBTQ figures, emphasizing “queer and transgender people of color,” according to the outlet.
Her Wikipedia assignments are in partnership with Wiki Education, a nonprofit that trains U.S. and Canadian faculty to have students contribute course-relevant articles to Wikipedia, with the goal of addressing “content gaps.”
Her students’ edits have been viewed over 96 million times.
She said she values this assignment because it allows her students to share their research with people in school districts with limited access to information on LGBTQ communities.
“I want my students to think of themselves as not just consumers of knowledge but as being able to produce knowledge as well,” Rodríguez said.
The students’ contributions have included homosexuality in ancient China and resources for legal services for trans-identifying migrants in the U.S., The Daily Californian reported.
“Right now, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very existence of transgender people, so having information about those histories, as well as present challenges facing queer and trans communities is particularly urgent,” Rodríguez said.
“Queer and trans people have always been here and adding that information to the world’s largest open access encyclopedia is one way to make sure that these stories remain available,” the professor said.
Further, Rodríguez told UC Berkeley News that her “Documenting Queer of Color Cultural Production” course “invites students to think of all the different ways that queer and trans and gender non-conforming people contribute to culture, history and society.”
She also said that on Wikipedia, there is more information about white and “Anglo” people than about other populations. “That’s a little more understood as history proper,” she said.
She said she is “really proud” that her students “make Wikipedia a more queer and colorful place.”
These UC Berkeley courses aren’t the only ones exploring these topics.
Boston University is offering a course titled “Queer Food” that examines topics such as what polyamorous, non-binary, and LGBTQ people eat, The College Fix reported.
Students might consider “how [their] food choice is representing [their] gender identity,” the professor said in an explanatory video produced by Boston U.
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