ABSTRACT
Transcribing many cursive scripts is becoming shockingly easier with artificial intelligence tools, which can be trained proficiently in handwriting recognition. Despite the growing presence of these digital technologies, teaching undergraduate students to read cursive handwriting by themselves ought to remain a standard skill taught by humanities teachers in higher education. Using a case study of a research project at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), this chapter elucidates an example of student-driven pedagogy, peer-to-peer transcription, and hands-on engagement with the materiality of texts. Co-written by two professors on the faculty, an archivist-librarian, and two undergraduate students, the chapter argues that accessible advice, such as searching for narrative as well as lexical context clues within a body of manuscript writing, may provide useful techniques for training undergraduates in how to read handwriting. Even for students who never learned to read or write by hand in their youth, learning how to read and transcribe cursive manuscripts is essential when grappling with much of the written human record.
