Rebecca Black

Associate Professor of Informatics, University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine

Rebecca W. Black received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2006. 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 exploring 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.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Monkeys at Dutch primate center.

Dutch primate center awaits October animal research debate

Science is forging ahead at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, following a reversal of last year’s mandate to phase out primate studies. But researchers aren’t sure how long the reprieve will last.

By Lauren Schenkman
2 September 2026 | 5 min read

When we sleep, our brain is filled with spontaneous neural activity. What is it doing?

Daniel Levenstein explains how internally generated brain activity during sleep shapes our cognition, and why NeuroAI is such a powerful approach to understanding the brain.

By Paul Middlebrooks
2 September 2026 | 96 min listen
Research image of organoids.

Unconfounding genetic and environmental factors, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 31 August.

By Jill Adams
1 September 2026 | 2 min read