A course at the University of California, Berkeley is addressing gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of LGBTQ topics by having students research and edit articles on queer and trans people of color. Since 2016, ethnic studies professor Juana María Rodríguez has worked with Wiki Education to offer classes where students contribute new content to the online encyclopedia.
“Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” said Rodríguez. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.”
The class, Documenting Queer of Color Cultural Production, encourages students to explore how queer and gender non-conforming individuals have shaped culture and history. Instead of submitting traditional papers, students conduct research—often using resources from UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies library—and then create or expand Wikipedia entries after discussing their work with classmates.
Rodríguez noted that many Wikipedia articles tend to focus on white or Anglo populations, leaving out more specific subcultures within marginalized communities. “It’s very specific topics that might really vary by region, by historical moment, and of course at different places around the world. Those topics, in Wikipedia and in real life, remain really under-studied and really under-researched,” she said.
Students in the course have written about subjects such as Indigenous drag performers, sex worker movements, and LGBTQ history in San Francisco’s Chinatown. According to Rodríguez, her students have added over 59 new articles and more than 3,000 citations since she began teaching the class. Some pages created through these efforts have received millions of views.
Alexia Guerra Cardona took Rodríguez’s class last spring and wrote about transgender asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America. Reflecting on her experience growing up as a child of Guatemalan immigrants in Los Angeles without seeing her background represented in school curricula, Guerra Cardona said: “I think that one thing that ethnic studies has taught me is ‘no history, no self.’ So you need to know where you come from in order to understand where you’re going.”
She included information about organizations supporting LGBTQ migrants seeking refuge or asylum in California: “That… was my favorite contribution out of all my pages. Because there’s not a lot of information about where they can go to… Even then there’s cultural differences between the U.S. and other countries… So that’s why I included the nonprofit organizations.”
After graduating with honors last spring with majors in ethnic studies and political science, Guerra Cardona now works as a paralegal for the Central American Resource Center while planning for law school.
Fourth-year student Mia Aguilar is currently researching trans representation in film across several countries for her class project this semester. She aims to broaden an existing Wikipedia page focused mainly on U.S. and European films by adding global perspectives: “I very intentionally went into this project wanting to learn from a worldwide perspective… I think that having queer representation or queer people is really important… queerness is everywhere and it’s so ingrained into history.”
Rodríguez believes using Wikipedia as part of coursework changes both classroom dynamics and how knowledge is produced: “The classroom becomes a space of collaborative learning. It demystifies the process of knowledge production… And it has a really far-reaching impact across the world.” She tells her students their work could reach anyone globally seeking information about LGBTQ communities.
She hopes her courses encourage lifelong engagement with knowledge creation: “Sometimes you can read something [on Wikipedia]…and now you know how to change it… Those kinds of things really make students feel empowered to not just consume knowledge but actually think of themselves as people that can produce knowledge for these larger publics.”
“So I’m always really proud of the kind of work that my students do to make Wikipedia a more queer and colorful place for us all to visit,” Rodríguez said.
