Adrianne Wadewitz (January 6, 1977 - April 8, 2014) was an American scholar of 18th-century British literature and a rare figure in the Wikipedia community.[1][2]
Biography
Adrianne Wadewitz was born on January 6, 1977 in Omaha, Nebraska. She studied English literature and received a degree in English from Columbia University in 1999.[3] She made her first edit on Wikipedia in 2004 and went on to create articles on female writers and scholars, several of them becoming featured articles. She made nearly 50,000 edits in all.[2][3] In 2011, she earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University and became a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Digital Learning and Research at Occidental College. She enjoyed her new hobby, rock climbing, for the last two years of her life and described it as “a new narrative about herself beyond that of a bookish, piano-playing Wikipedia contributor.”[3]
On April 8, 2014, Wadewitz died from head injuries sustained in a rock climbing fall at Joshua Tree National Park. Her death, and her work on Wikipedia, received coverage from news outlets such as the New York Times[3] and The Desert Sun.[4] Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, described Wadewitz's death as a "huge loss" and said she may have been Wikipedia's "single biggest contributor on ... female authors [and] women's history".[1][2][3][4]
Bibliography
- Wadewitz, Adrianne (2011). ""'Spare the Sympathy, Spoil the Child:' Sensibility, Selfhood, and the Maturing Reader, 1775-1815"". Retrieved 20 April 2014.
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References
- ^ a b Mark Shrayber (2014-04-19). "Saturday Night Social: The Night Belongs to Adrianne Wadewitz". Jezebel.com.
- ^ a b c Solé, Elise (2014-04-18). "Remembering Adrianne Wadewitz, Beloved Wikipedia Wiz". Yahoo.com. Yahoo! Inc. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ a b c d e Cohen, Noam (2014-04-18). "Adrianne Wadewitz, 37, Wikipedia Editor, Dies After Rock Climbing Fall". NYTimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ a b Newkirk, Barrett (2014-04-18). "Wikipedia editor Adrianne Wadewitz dies in Palm Springs". DesertSun.com. The Desert Sun. Retrieved 2014-04-18.