Stephanie Kingsley Brooks

Summary of Qualifications

• Positive and proactive
• Excellent communication skills, written and spoken
• Attention to detail; superior organizational skills; keen sense of grammar
• Highly developed critical reading, writing, and research skills
• Continuing interest in learning and implementing new techniques in web communications

Skills

• Editorial: news reporting, academic literary analysis, web copy, and technical
• Web/technology: experience with custom content management systems (Ingeniux), Wordpress, and Drupal; XML, TEI, HTML, and CSS; Google Analytics; SEO; social media management software; Microsoft Office Suite; experience with various Adobe programs
• Language: Proficiency in written and conversational Spanish
• Music: Violin performance in symphonies, bands, small ensembles

Education

• M.A. English, University of Virginia (GPA: 4.0), May 2014
• A.B. English and Spanish; Film Studies Minor; University of Georgia, May 2010 (Summa Cum Laude)

Employment

American Historical Association (AHA), Washington, D.C.

Associate Editor, Web Content and Social Media, Nov. 2014 to Feb. 2018

• Produced, edited, and published high-quality web resources on AHA initiatives, as well as resources for history faculty and students
• Edited the blog, AHA Today; grew our following through more engaging, diverse, member-focused content
• Managed AHA social media accounts: wrote, edited, and published posts while also responding to incoming messages; maintained an active social media presence for the association, almost doubling our Twitter followers during my employment
• Tracked and reported on the success of social media and marketing campaigns, working closely with the AHA marketing manager
• Stayed up to date on search engine ranking trends and educated editorial staff on online publishing best practices
• Monitored AHA website performance using Google Analytics to identify areas for improvement and worked with out-of-house developers to execute web projects
• Interfaced frequently with AHA members through daily moderation of the AHA Members’ Forum, editing web resources, on social media, and at the AHA annual meeting

Papers of George Washington, Charlottesville

Temporary Hourly Employee, Aug. 2014 to present

• Assist on the George Washington Bibliography Project by locating, examining, and researching books. I then enter publication details, remarkable physical features, and an annotation on the content of the book into a record in our database in FileMaker.
• Will soon begin assisting with the organization's social media endeavors.

Rare Book School, Charlottesville

RBS-Mellon Fellowship Assistant, May 2014 to present

• Manage activity on RBS's social networking site, RBS Connect, built on WordPress. Discuss and plan improvements and desired features with my supervisor and the lead programmer. Also provide support to users and troubleshoot technical problems.
• Interface with Mellon Fellows during the summer, getting feedback on their RBS courses, the status of their projects, and other fellowship-related activity. Conduct prompt, friendly, and professional correspondence during the year via email.
• Assist in recruitment for the fellowship program by researching potential publicity contacts, producing mailing lists, and proofreading informational pamphlets.

Collections Assistant, Aug. 2013 to May 2014

• Assisted with cataloging and shelving newly acquired books; learned about curating the collections in the process, as well as the proper way to handle and store rare books.
• Constructed a teaching guide for a new set of materials related to the publication of The Cricket in Times Square, which will be helpful to instructors interested in using the collection to teach about scholarly editing.

Documents Compass, Charlottesville, VA

Intern and Graduate Employee, May 2013 to November 2013

• Conducted research on enslaved people working at the University of Virginia in antebellum times for the digital project People of the Founding Era, which is a relational database of the biographical information of persons mentioned in the Papers of the Founding Fathers.
• Brainstormed with my supervisor, Sue Perdue, on new ways of linking records in the database.
• Learned about digital documentary editing procedures and metadata.
• Presented research with Sue Perdue and Encyclopedia Virginia editor Brendan Wolfe (see "Conferences" below).

University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA

Editorial Intern, Summer 2013

• Checked page proofs for formatting and line breaks.
• Edited manuscript indexes.
• Attended launch meetings for new publications.

Publicity Intern, Sept. 2013 to Nov. 2012

• Wrote press releases and compiled review-copy mailing lists for new publications.
• Assisted in publicizing press and author events.

Collective Biographies of Women, University of Virginia

Research Assistant to Professor Alison Booth, Sept. 2012 to May 2013

• Read nineteenth-century women’s biographies and analyze biographical details, themes and narrative structure.
• Using XML mark-up, I record the locations of these elements, which in the CBW database can be searched for in multiple biographies to analyze frequency and identify potential patterns.

The Inspiration Networks, Indian Land, SC

Closed Caption Writer, Oct. 2010 to July 2012

• Typed closed captioning for the hearing-impaired for network television programming using Swift software.
• Completed project management duties for specific series: tasks included maintaining spreadsheets, reviewing caption files, and forwarding the master tapes and files.
• Wrote a style manual outlining all aspects of closed caption writing as it was done in the department. The manual has been instrumental in improving uniformity within the department and training new hires.

Fellowships

Scholars' Lab, UVa

Praxis Fellowship, 2013-2014

• Worked with five other graduate students to plan and construct a digital-humanities project: the Ivanhoe Game.
• Served as project manager to our team: lead meetings, managed timelines and to-do lists; brainstormed with team to improve workflows; became the primary spokesperson for our cohort and our project.
• Organized publicity for the project: wrote blog announcements; coordinated, edited, and published blog posts from team members; advertised the project and fellowship via Twitter; wrote and edited web content on our informational site.
• Reflected on my project management experiences on the Praxis blog at praxis.scholarslab.org. For more information on this program and my role, see Digital Projects.

Rare Book School, Charlottesville

RBS-UVA Fellowship, 2013-2014

• Completed David Seaman's course, "XML in Action" in Summer 2013.
• Applied my new skills in XML markup to create a digital edition of James Fenimore Cooper's novel Mercedes of Castile, the Preface and Chapter XXIII. (See Digital Projects.)
• Project received Honorable Mention for the Betsy and Stuart Houston Prize for Most Outstanding Project

Awards and Scholarships

• Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia Student Book-Collecting Contest Winner: Second place, for "A Collection of Early Editions of James Fenimore Cooper's Mercedes of Castile.
• NINES 2014 DHSI (Digital Humanities Summer Institute) Scholarship
• ACH (Association for Computers and the Humanities) 2014 DHSI Bursary

Conferences

• Organized and moderated the annual Digital Projects Lightning Round at the American Historical Association 2015-2018 annual meetings
• National Council on Public History 2016 Annual Meeting: “Methods for Digital Archiving and Biography”
• 2015 American Historical Association annual meeting : “Marking Text for Digital History from Microhistory to Big Data with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)”
• 2015 AHA Annual Meeting: “Documentary Editors Engage the 21st Century,” (Panel Organizer and Chair)
• "Introducing the New Ivanhoe Game," Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Victoria, Canada, 4 June 2014.
• "Textual Analysis of Martin R. Delaney's Blake, or, the Huts of America," Reading Then and Now, UVa, 5 April 2014.
• "Reading Digitally with Prism and Ivanhoe," a panel of Praxis Fellows for the Graduate English Student Association conference Reading Then and Now, UVa, Charlottesville, 4 April 2014.
• "An Analysis of a Typescript of Ellen Glasgow's In This Our Life, for the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 21 March 2014.
• UCARE Virginia Universities and Race Histories Conference: Paper "The Little Bricklayers: Identifying the Slave Populations at the University of Virginia" with Sue Perdue (Documents Compass) and Brendan Wolfe (Encyclopedia Virginia), 9 November 2013.

Articles

• Staff pieces for the AHA monthly newsmagazine, Perspectives on History, including:
  • "Making Digital History Accessible" (October 2017)
  • "Book History: A Perspectives Quick Study" (October 2016)
  • "Meeting Tweeting: Insights on Making Connections from #AHA16" (April 2016)
  • "History on Wheels: Hitting the Road with the Traces BUS-eum and the Philly History Truck" (November 2015)
  • "Notes from the Past: Two Consort Ensembles Unveil New Seasons" (October 2015)
  • "Plotting Freedom: Data Mapping Leads to New Interpretations of Reconstruction" (October 2015)
• Staff posts for the AHA blog, AHA Today
• ProfHacker guest post for The Chronical of Higher Education: "Playing in the Classroom with the Ivanhoe Game!"
• Blog post: "Connect, Create, Inspire: The Ivanhoe Game returns!" on HASTAC, 29 April 2014.
• Praxis Scholars' Lab blog posts.
• Blog post: "grinding ] gnashing: Juxta collation of Delany's Blake yields insights into the novel's uncertain conclusion," on NINES and Juxta, 20 January 2014.
• Blog post: "Work Flows and Wish Lists: Reflections on Juxta as an Editorial Tool," on NINES, 14 January 2014, and Juxta, 17 Jan. 2014.
• Blog post: "Ellen Glasgow, James Branch Cabell, and a Manuscript Mystery Solved," on Notes from Under Grounds, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections, University of Virginia, 28 September 2013; featured on The Silver Stallion: The James Branch Cabell Website.

Related Coursework

American Book in the Industrial Era (RBS)	Michael Winship	Summer 2014
Digital Humanities Databases (DHSI)	Harvey Quamen and Jon Bath	Summer 2014
American Historiography	Jerome McGann	Fall 2013
XML in Action: Creating TEI Texts (RBS)	David Seaman	Summer 2013
Independent Study: The American Renaissance	Jennifer Greeson	Spring 2013
American Enlightenment	Jennifer Greeson	Spring 2013
Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing	David Vander Meulen	Spring 2013
Books as Physical Objects	David Vander Meulen	Fall 2012