Rebecca Black

Summer 2011 Mentor

Rebecca Black is an Assistant Professor of Language, Literacy, and Technology in the Department of Education at UC Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research centers on the literacy and socialization practices of young people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds who are writing and participating in online, popular culture-inspired environments. This work includes an explicit focus on the 21st century skills and forms of literacy and learning that youth are engaging with in online spaces. Dr. Black’s work has been published in Teachers College Record, Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, the International Journal of Learning and Media, and E-learning. Her book, Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction, explores how English language learning youth represent their cultural and linguistic identities through fan fiction texts was published by Peter Lang in the Spring of 2008.