17 Finding Trouble in the Archives: Writing and Rhetorical Analysis of Primary Sources in the General Education Classroom and Beyond

Since 2013, Dr. Catherine Savini’s essay “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment,” in the open-source textbook series Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing,^[1] has served as a foundational pedagogical tool for developing class activities in the teaching with primary sources education program at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), especially in first-year Writing and Rhetoric courses. “Looking for Trouble” has also served as an integral part of assignment development and skill building in many Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies (WRD) 100-level courses, as well as a syllabus development guide for graduate student teaching assistants in the WRD department. As a public land grant institution, the University of Kentucky (UK) serves as the flagship for the Commonwealth and one of only eight institutions in the United States with liberal arts, engineering, professional, agricultural, and medical programs on one campus. UK also maintains a strong commitment to undergraduate student success. WRD courses^[2] form part of the general education core curriculum designed to prepare students for a wide variety of careers and the SCRC supports active learning primary source sessions in approximately one hundred undergraduate courses per year.^[3] In this chapter we discuss how applying the concept of finding “trouble” to our teaching provides a bridge between first-year writing and rhetorical analysis assignments and primary source literacy skills that can be adapted for use in many types of primary source sessions across disciplines. The concept of “trouble” in this context is defined as any element of an archival source item—whether it be the text, language, narrative, structure, format, or materiality—that is unfamiliar, challenges common knowledge or assumptions, flips a common narrative, reveals something unexpected, or presents an alternative point of view.

Dr. Catherine Savini serves as a professor of English at Westfield State University where she is also the director of the Reading and Writing Center and coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum. Her experience working with first-year college students and her research related to equity and linguistic bias can be seen in the approachable style of “Looking for Trouble” and her many other works. The essay is also a good introduction for students to college-level writing assignments generally, since Savini nimbly relates the main ideas of scholarly inquiry to examples of ordinary, daily challenges and introduces the life skill of “integrative thinking,” which is essential when working with primary sources and successfully navigating writing assignments. Integrative thinkers “embrace complexity” and “tap into the tension between two opposing ideas… ultimately producing new insights [and new] alternatives.”^[4] The challenges of developing assignments for first-year writing courses that truly engage students and teach these necessary skills have been well-documented.^[5] Likewise, the concept of utilizing the unfamiliar to unwind assumptions, nostalgia, and historical complexities has proven effective^[6] and the benefits of using primary sources as a point of entry for scholarly work, critical thinking, and information literacy skills fill the pages of library and archives journals, book chapters, case studies, and conference programs.^[7] Though a simple concept, looking for and finding “trouble” in the archives and in writing assignments opens innumerable doors to understanding varying perspectives,^[8] unpacking arguments, identifying bias, and applying the types of critical analysis skills highlighted in the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy.^[9]

The primary benefit of using Savini’s “Looking for Trouble” to integrate primary sources into writing assignments is that it lays out a framework for inquiry in four easily understood and adaptable steps that allows students to explore any topic, community, subject area, artifact, assignment, or research question.

• The first step, Noticing, is an essential starting point and cannot be skipped. There are no wrong answers, giving students a chance to be curious and safely uncertain.
• Step two, Articulating a Problem and its Details, provides an exploratory space.
• Step three, Posing Fruitful Questions, allows students to practice inquisitiveness and develop meaningful, probing questions.
• And fourth, Identifying What is at Stake? gives students a chance to see how a problem affects multiple stakeholders or different kinds of people, groups, or social contexts.

Savini states that “looking for trouble can be an effective approach regardless of the assignment,”^[10] suggesting that students first engage with “an unfamiliar text by identifying its purpose,” which is especially useful for students interacting with primary sources for the first time.^[11] Central to finding “trouble” is the ability to ask open-ended questions. Archival and primary source materials present the perfect opportunity for undergraduates to practice asking questions of their sources and to begin to question research findings, belief systems, cultural norms, or unexamined assumptions and begin to see the differences between reliable sources or scholarly works and other types of writing. Within the context of finding “trouble,” students begin to get comfortable questioning the authority of a source or the motives of a writer as they contemplate the purpose and audience of a source. Students can then connect purpose to consequences by scrutinizing what is at stake and exploring how examining and re-examining questions can deepen the research process.

In Savini’s essay, the four steps are framed within the sections Problems as Process; Practice, Practice, Practice; and Problems as Product, which we have aligned with our in-class introduction of the finding “trouble” steps, the in-class and in-archives document and artifact activities that allow students to practice finding “trouble,” and the final phase of using these skills to develop course capstone writing projects. Practice and the ability to view writing or source analysis as a process is essential for developing and mastering writing and analytical skills, as well as for perseverance when facing challenges and becoming effective leaders in other aspects of one’s life and career.^[12] Through meaningful, engaging practice with compelling primary sources, students then begin to understand how these transferable skills in critical inquiry go beyond the writing requirement and influence their success long-term.^[13]

Planning and Curating Primary Source Materials

To practice finding “trouble,” hands-on active learning activities in the archives classroom are planned prior to the course writing assignment and specifically developed to serve as a training exercise. We schedule the activities approximately 3-6 weeks into the semester, if possible, so that the students have reviewed and practiced all four of Savini’s steps in class before going to the archives. This is the time in the semester when students are exploring topics for the capstone project and giving speeches on various interests and issues to warm up their research practices. This is important when finding “trouble” in the archives is part of a semester long-project, because the time in the archives should be for practicing skills students have already started to develop in class. However, in-archives classes can be scheduled anytime in the semester when working with other types of courses or assignments.

Archivists and instructors collaborate to draw up a list of potential sources and topics that are likely to catch students by surprise or elicit intrigue. Archival materials need to provide a digestible, not-overwhelming amount of text or content for a first-year writing student and include some kind of argument, persuasion, or information with varying interpretations. Ideally sources should have an interesting hook, a controversy or idiosyncrasy, or perhaps an unfamiliar layout, while also providing an accessible background context suitable for a rhetorical analysis assignment. A wide variety of source types, printing methods, visual content, formats, and subjects are included. The items could be stand-alone units in a single folder or small collections of curated items grouped together. Items and document sets are chosen from the papers of faculty, community activists and leaders, student groups, regional authors, state politicians, general artificial collections, or print materials from the catalog. Examples include the handwritten transcripts of 1930s radio addresses related to air quality in schools and hospitals, circa 1908-1919 pamphlets related to advocacy for national healthcare and insurance programs, tracts on child labor standards and public education, mid-20th century pamphlets related to improving race relations or integration of the U.S. military and public schools, broadsides or propaganda posters, campus archival items such as student newspapers, student clubs and organization collections related to campus protests.^[14] World War I and II, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), or Vietnam War-era materials appeal to some students, while social club programs, suffrage posters, and newspapers draw others. Some students are particularly interested in diaries and letters, while those with less experience or comfort reading handwriting choose to work with printed pamphlets, brochures, tracts, advertisements, and broadsides. One set of documents repeatedly requested by instructors is a collection of rhetorically dense “family values” brochures and documents from the early 20th century published by a white supremist group. The University of Kentucky has a complicated southern/mid-western identity, and the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) holds items that exemplify this often-perplexing history and accompanying tensions. The source is particularly effective for the finding “trouble” activity because students are immediately thrown into a type of cognitive dissonance. They have often been socialized in one context to believe that family values are important, while educated in other contexts that such groups represent a racist minority population with a specific type of agenda. This confounding duality always leads to some probing and often disbelieving questions that can lead to deeper inquiry and a desire to understand the contradictory rhetoric found in the sources.^[15]

Using “Trouble” in the First Year Writing and Rhetoric Classroom

At times, it can be challenging to pique students’ curiosity in a required general education course that they may, at best, find uninteresting or irrelevant to their major, or at worst, even resent having to take. Students regularly complain that they already know how to write a research paper and they do not know why they have to take the class. To get them out of that seriously well-worn rut, we developed a practice of taking them into the archives early in the semester. Prior to the visit to Special Collections for the main practice activity using the chosen materials, the instructor holds a guided in-class review of each of the four steps using a selection of digital items for demonstration. The entire class participates as a group and walks through the exercise together with the instructor. First, we have a class discussion of the four-step process that Savini details in the article. Noticing is the place where students have to work hard to let their curiosity awaken. Then, we look at the images in Savini’s essay and the floor is open to students to challenge the process or to ask questions. Second, the instructor presents additional images, usually advertisements or single pane editorial comics, that are intentionally provocative or attention-getting. Visual rhetoric may or may not have been discussed at this point in the semester, but either way, this is often best as a think-pair-share or small group/large group discussion. It can be part of a class, or an entire class period, depending on how much work the students need to get their “noticing” muscles in shape.

The second step, Articulating a Problem and its Details, can be a sticky place for students and, depending on the level of interest and engagement, this may be where they need more shepherding or even direct instruction. They are encouraged to choose 2-3 things they noticed and jot down some reasons why these details could be problematic. Sometimes they are able to make sophisticated inferences, but often the observations will be very surface level. The most effective practice has been to go around the room spending a few minutes with each group as they share with the class 2-3 things that caught their attention, then explain as a group why it is problematic. It may be worthwhile to step in here as the instructor and complicate the observations for the first one or two groups to help the others see the nuances that can be developed.

The third step, Posing Fruitful Questions, is easy for some students and very challenging for others. In the classroom, before our visit to the archives, we spend multiple class periods talking about the difference between open-ended and closed questions, as well as the kinds of questions that can lead to fruitful inquiry and those that are resolved too quickly to be worth exploring. Once the entire class has participated in step 2, they return to their small groups and write a series of questions. These are often couched in terms of “what is missing?” or “what do they need to know to better understand their source?” This is where archival sources are particularly engaging for students. Because there is often some unknown context they are invited to go online and see what they can find out about the period of time, the people and organizations mentioned, the locations and dates on the items, etc. After a few minutes of research, they then create a list of at least 3-5 questions that are open-ended and would require additional research or deeper observation to answer. We do not usually share as a class at this point, because these questions lead very organically into step 4, Identifying What is at Stake.   Setting up this next step by focusing on what is at stake is an essential part of the process. Considering what is lost or gained by digging deeper into a particular source or issue speaks to the adult learners’ need for intrinsic motivation and seeing the connection between fully developing these skills and their long-term success.^[16] It is also important, in courses that focus on community and difference, to help students understand that research can lead to information about groups or individuals that you respect or care about that is problematic, or even offensive. Asking questions is dangerous and students must consider: How do I deal with finding answers I do not want to know? This practice aligns with much of the transformative learning pedagogical model and is inherently uncomfortable and requires the learner to reconcile information that may unsettle their worldview. If students are not experienced with this kind of learning they need to be prepared for the challenges they will face. For a few students, acknowledging this challenge causes them to change topics. For some, it allows them to see more clearly, engage their community, and research with more compassion and empathy. For others, it just makes them angry to see their idols as flawed humans within broken human systems. When guided and handled with compassion, an emotional classroom reaction can provide an essential learning opportunity.

In-Class Archival Materials Activity

Since most WRD 100-level courses meet for 50 minutes, finding “trouble” succinctly communicates to students how to approach the in-archives class time and begin engaging the archival material with a short introductory lecture. Once instructed in appropriate ways to handle the materials, students dive into the carefully curated selection of items in front of them. Using the four steps outlined by Savini, the archival activity worksheet provides time posts for completing each section (5 minutes, 20 minutes, etc.) and aligns each step with instructions that use basic principles of archival source analysis and different modes of historical thinking.^[17] During the prior in-class introduction to finding “trouble” guided by the instructor, the noticing part can take up to half of the class period, requiring the remaining 3 steps to move more quickly. In the archives, however, we flip the timing, focusing on the later steps. In pairs or small groups of 3-5, students list what they notice about an item in just a couple of minutes, specifically directed to look at the artifact or document structure, parts, and pieces. Then, they articulate problems and seek out anything odd, interesting, strange, curious, confusing, unfamiliar, or humorous—such as tensions, contradictions, or confusing language—and write out their observations. Students are encouraged to use their devices to look up any needed information. Third, students are instructed to pose fruitful questions related to any of the document characteristics, interesting qualities, trouble spots, concerns, or anything else they noticed and identified. To wrap up the activity, 2-3 groups are asked to volunteer, sharing their most engaging questions and what is at stake if they take on a research topic based on a question asked of their source. Here, our roles as the archivist and instructor are to draw out the complications of their questions, possibly reframing them or expanding them so they have more focus or are more research ready. This is an important moment to help the students understand how the questions raised by primary source research provide fertile ground for a writing thesis. We discuss not limiting oneself to a single path of inquiry at the moment but exploring several and seeing what other interesting questions come up.

Benefits of Finding “Trouble” in the Archives

The four steps and framework in Savini’s “Looking for Trouble” make transparent the process of igniting a learner’s natural inquisitiveness and then harnessing that curiosity for more effective research and writing. It is important to note that the fruit of integrating Savini’s approach into first-year writing courses is a more engaged and responsive researcher and a student that willingly engages more energetically and completely in the writing process. The student has a vested interest in their topic because it is born out of curiosity, thus making it easier for them to engage in the various stages of writing and iterating their project. Students want to know more and therefore they are willing to read more, discuss their ideas in greater depth, and write more meaningful content about them. As adult pedagogical models often note, unlike children, mature students need to have intrinsic motivation to work and a clear understanding of how and why this work is necessary for them as individuals.^[18] Adult learners (even the young adult, college age, or recent high schooler version) are rarely willing to invest significant effort into a process without a clear, tangible, personally useful outcome. Using Savini’s approach allows students to be treated as adults pedagogically and this then helps them to own their identity as researchers, writers, and creators. They are able to see a direct connection between questions raised in their own mind and the development of a unique research thesis, thus leading to more sophisticated and meaningful projects and often a greater retention of good writing and research practice skills. As an added bonus, final projects and papers are therefore much more interesting to read and grade, as students begin to produce true original research. This is particularly important in the current academic environment where, as Owen Kichizo Terry noted in his editorial on May 12, 2023, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, students are already using AI such as ChatGPT to write entire papers, from creating initial claims to writing body paragraphs.^[19] The use of AI is made even easier when students are required to write about common themes or widely read texts. By introducing primary sources into the research and composition process early, it is much more difficult for students to create assignments wholesale from AI. This also allows for less concern about intentional or unintentional plagiarism. As instructors and archivists, we actually get to participate in transformational learning along with the students by using Savini’s process, making a required first-year writing course, which many students and instructors view as a slog, a more engaging experience that opens the potential to wrestle with identity, context, and community, or to see well-trodden topics from new perspectives.

Conclusion

Finding “trouble” provides an easy-to-understand, conceptual framework that encapsulates the overall goal of an introductory or exploratory primary source activity. The four steps outlined by Savini—Noticing, Articulating a Problem and its Details, Posing Fruitful Questions, Identifying What is at Stake?—help us as the instructor and the archivist to clearly articulate the overall goals of the assignment and the type of engagement with the archival materials we are encouraging from the students. The activity gives first-year college students, or learners at many levels from middle school to adult learners, a process for connecting with the archival material, engaging that curiosity with the course theme, and then developing a strong thesis and successful piece of writing. Archives often show us the messy reality behind the official histories, media sound bites, shiny marketing pamphlets, and status quo understandings of complex topics and situations. The four steps for finding “trouble” give us the structure needed to help students build skills for interpreting and interrogating sources, practicing and applying those skills, and developing them into information literacies. Students simultaneously apply the inquiry towards developing a thesis, constructing an argument, and completing a rhetorical analysis writing assignment.

Epilogue and Additional Resources

Applying the concept of finding “trouble” to writing assignments and primary source analysis as described in this chapter was developed in 2013 and 2014 by WRD instructor Dr. Rebecca Wiggins and archivist Jay-Marie Bravent (formerly Jaime Marie Bradley/Burton) at the University of Kentucky. This process has influenced active learning activities across the curriculum and has been shared through presentations and conferences with other archivists at institutions across Kentucky, regionally, and beyond. Sample materials, including worksheets, syllabi, assignments, rubrics, etc. that can be used and adapted for your own classroom may be found at the links below. We also provide a bibliography that includes additional works, beyond those specifically cited in this chapter, that have influenced our teaching methods and development of this process.

UKnowledge: University of Kentucky’s Institutional Repository, https://uknowledge.uky.edu

Finding Trouble in the Archives, https://jmbravent.net/finding-trouble/^[20]

Bibliography

Andrews, Thomas, and Flannery Burke. “What Does it Mean to Think Historically.” Perspectives on History 45, no. 1 (2007): 32-35. Accessed May 2023. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically archived July 22, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240722224700/https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically-january-2007/.

Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Book and Manuscript Section and Society of American Archivists (ACRL-RBMS/SAA) Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. (2018). Accessed April 2023. https://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/GuidelinesForPrimarySourceLiteracy-June2018.pdf archived July 24, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240724165931/https://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/GuidelinesForPrimarySourceLiteracy-June2018.pdf.

Beam, Carey, and Carrie Schwier. “Learning in Place: The Teaching Archivist and Place-based Education.” Archival Issues 39, no. 1 (2018): 7-25.

Brown, Kathleen M. “Leadership for Social Justice and Equity: Weaving a Transformative Framework and Pedagogy.” Education Administration Quarterly 40, no. 1 (2004): 77-108.

Burton, Jaime Marie, and Matthew Strandmark. “Applying Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek’s Science of Learning to Undergraduate Primary Source Instruction and Assessment,” Teaching Undergraduates with Archives Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 8, 2018.

Carini, Peter. “Archivists as Educators: Integrating Primary Sources into the Curriculum.” Journal of Archival Organization 7, no. 1-2 (2009): 41-50.

Champagne, Brooke, and Amy Hildreth Chen. “A Certain Kind of Seduction: Integrating Archival Research into a First-Year Writing Curriculum University of Alabama.” in Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections, 117-29. Edited by Kate Theimer. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

Chase, E. “Teaching First-Year Writing with ‘all the detritus, debris and ephemera’ of literary manuscripts.” In Past or Portal: Enhancing Undergraduate Learning Through Special Collections and Archives, 103-108. Edited by Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seiden, and Suzy Taraba. Association of College and Research Libraries, 2012.

Garcia, Patricia, Joseph Lueck, and Elizabeth Yakel. “The Pedagogical Promise of Primary Sources: Research Trends, Persistent Gaps, and New Directions.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 45, no. 2 (2019): 94-101.

Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2016.

Knowles, Malcolm S. Andragogy in Action: Applying Modern Principles of Adult Education. San Francisco, California: Jossy Bass, 1984.

Krause, Magia G. ” ‘It Makes History Alive for Them’: The Role of Archivists and Special Collections Librarians in Instructing Undergraduates.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 36, no. 5 (2010): 401-11.

Library of Congress. Getting Started with Primary Sources: Teacher’s Guides and Primary Source Analysis Tool. Accessed April 2023. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/documents/Primary_Source_Analysis_Tool_LOC.pdf archived July 24, 2024, at  https://web/20240724170007/https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/documents/Primary_Source_Analysis_Tool_LOC.pdf

Loeng, Svein. “Various Ways of Understanding the Concept of Andragogy.” Cogent Education 5, no. 1 (2018): 1-15.

Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Mandell, Nikki, and Bobbie Malone. Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction. Wisconsin Historical Society, 2013.

Morgan, Denise N., and Timothy V. Rasinski. “The Power and Potential of Primary Sources.” The Reading Teacher 65, no. 8 (2012): 584-94.

Nollan, Fred. “Using Primary Documents and Local Archives to Teach the Research Paper.” Alki 28, no. 1 (2012): 7-8.

Riley, Kathleen, and Kathryn Solic. “Change Happens Beyond the Comfort Zone: Bridging Undergraduate Teacher-Candidates into Activist Teacher Communities.” Journal of Teacher Education 68, no. 2 (2017): 179-92.

Robyns, Marcus C. “The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction.” American Archivist 64, no. 2 (2001): 363-84.

Rockenbach, Barbara. “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library.” American Archivist 74, no.1 (2011): 297-311.

Rohmiller, Amy, and Teresa Saxton. “Go to the Source: Effective Archivist/Faculty Collaboration in Writing Instruction.” In Cases on Establishing Effective Collaborations in Academic Libraries, 230-248. Edited by Mary E. Piorum and Regina Fisher Raboin. IGI Global, 2022.

Rosenzweig, Roy, and David Thelen. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Savini, Catherine. “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment.” In Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing Volume 2, 52-70. Edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemlianksy. New York: Parlor Press, 2011. https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/looking-for-trouble-finding-your-way-into-a-writing-assignment/ archived July 24, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240724170203/https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/looking-for-trouble-finding-your-way-into-a-writing-assignment/.

Sinha, Shilpi. “Dialogue as a Site of Transformative Possibility.” Studies of the Philosophy of Education 29 (2010): 459-475.

Squibb, Sara Davidson, Catherine Koehler, and Jerrold Shiroma. “Engaging Neglected Histories: First-Year Students, Archives, and Wikipedia.” College & Research Libraries News 84, no. 3 (2023): 103-109.

Taylor, Edward W. “Transformative Learning Theory.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 119 (2008): 5-15.

Teaching with Primary Sources Collective. Teaching with Primary Sources Bibliography. Accessed April 2023. https://tpscollective.org/bibliography/ archived July 24, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240724171337/https://tpscollective.org/bibliography/

Terry, Owen Kichizo. “I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT. No Professor or Software Could Ever Pick Up on It.” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2023. https://www.chronicle.com/article/im-a-student-you-have-no-idea-how-much-were-using-chatgpt.

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Department, “About,” College of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky. Accessed April 2023. https://wrd.as.uky.edu/wrd-about archived July 24, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240724171004/https://wrd.as.uky.edu/about

Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.

Yakel, Elizabeth. “Information Literacy for Primary Sources: Creating a New Paradigm for Archival Researcher Education.” OCLC Systems & Services 20, no. 2 (2004): 61-64.

endnotes

[1]Catherine Savini, “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment,” in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 2 (Writing Spaces.org, Online, 2011), 52-70. https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/looking-for-trouble-finding-your-way-into-a-writing-assignment/ archived January 10, 2024, at https://web.archive.org/web/20240110212548/https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/looking-for-trouble-finding-your-way-into-a-writing-assignment/

[2]Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Department, “About,” College of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky. Accessed April 2023. https://wrd.as.uky.edu/wrd-about archived December 14, 2023, at https://web.archive.org/web/20231214055804/https://wrd.as.uky.edu/wrd-about

[3]J. M. Burton and Matthew Strandmark, “Applying Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek’s Science of Learning to Undergraduate Primary Source Instruction and Assessment,” Teaching Undergraduates with Archives Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 8, 2018.

[4]Savini, 53-54.

[5]Brooke Champagne and Amy Hildreth Chen, “A Certain Kind of Seduction: Integrating Archival Research into a First-Year Writing Curriculum University of Alabama,” in Educational Programs: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections, ed. Kate Theimer (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 117-129. E. Chase, “Teaching First-Year Writing with ‘all the detritus, debris and ephemera’ of literary manuscripts,” in Past or Portal: Enhancing Undergraduate Learning Through Special Collections and Archives, eds. Eleanor Mitchell, Peggy Seiden, Suzy Taraba (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2012), 103-108. Fred Nollan, “Using Primary Documents and Local Archives to Teach the Research Paper,” Alki 28, no. 1 (2012): 7-8. Amy Rohmiller and Teresa Saxton, “Go to the Source: Effective Archivist/Faculty Collaboration in Writing Instruction,” in Cases on Establishing Effective Collaborations in Academic Libraries, eds. Mary E. Piorum and Regina Fisher Raboin (IGI Global, 2023): 230-247.

[6]David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 7-25. Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 12.

[7]Examples include Carey Beam and Carrie Schwier, “Learning in Place: The Teaching Archivist and Place-based Education,” Archival Issues 39, no. 1 (2018): 7-25. Peter Carini, “Archivists as Educators: Integrating Primary Sources into the Curriculum,” Journal of Archival Organization 7, no. 1-2 (2009): 41-50. Patricia Garcia, Joseph Lueck, and Elizabeth Yakel, “The Pedagogical Promise of Primary Sources: Research Trends, Persistent Gaps, and New Directions,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 45, no. 2 (2019): 94-101. Magia G. Krause, “‘It Makes History Alive for Them’: The Role of Archivists and Special Collections Librarians in Instructing Undergraduates,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 36, no. 5 (2010): 401-11. Marcus C. Robyns, “The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction,” American Archivist 64, no. 2 (2001): 363-384. Barbara Rockenbach, “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library,” American Archivist 74, no.1 (2011): 297-311. Sara Davidson Squibb, Catherine Koehler, and Jerrold Shiroma, “Engaging Neglected Histories: First-Year Students, Archives, and Wikipedia,” College & Research Libraries News 84, no. 3 (2023): 103-109. Elizabeth Yakel, “Information Literacy for Primary Sources: Creating a New Paradigm for Archival Researcher Education,” OCLC Systems & Services 20, no. 2 (2004): 61-64. A wide array of additional sources can be found in the Teaching with Primary Sources Collective, Teaching with Primary Sources Bibliography. Accessed April 2023.

[8]Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 37-39.

[9]Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Book and Manuscript Section and Society of American Archivists (ACRL-RBMS/SAA) Joint Task Force on the Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy (2018). Accessed April 2023.

[10]Savini, 54.

[11]Savini, 68.

[12]Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children (American Psychological Association, 2016), 40, 134, 165-168, 172. Denise N. Morgan and Timothy V. Rasinski, “The Power and Potential of Primary Sources,” The Reading Teacher 65, no. 8 (2012): 586.

[13]Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke, “What Does it Mean to Think Historically,” Perspectives on History 45, no. 1 (2007), 35.

[14]During some years, the course assignment focused on topics with a 100-year anniversary, so material selection was further narrowed to items specifically from 1910-1920.

[15]At an unknown point in the past, items related to the Ku Klu Klan (KKK) were removed from other collections and kept as an artificial collection. They have occasionally been used for teaching purposes and as prompts for how to discern bias and misinformation, identify the coded language and dog-whistles of prejudice and racism, or show the mixed messages of Progressive Era reform. In some cases, we know the collections the items came from and can discuss how leaders could be social activists in some ways while also biased, racist, rigid, and contrary in relation to other social issues. It is strongly acknowledged that some items could be trauma-inducing for students, therefore great care is taken when choosing items and imagery from this set of materials.

[16]Many of the ideas surrounding adult learning and the importance of intrinsic motivation were first promoted by Malcolm Knowles in his 1984 text, Andragogy in Action: Applying Modern Principles of Adult Learning, and they have been discussed and expanded on considerably in the last 40 years. More recently, in 2018, Svein Loeng discusses the different ways the term andragogy and its related practices have evolved from its earliest mentions in European history through more current usage. Malcolm S. Knowles, Andragogy in Action: Applying Modern Principles of Adult Education (San Francisco, CA: Jossy Bass, 1984). Svein Loeng, “Various Ways of Understanding the Concept of Andragogy,” Cogent Education 5, no. 1 (2018): 1-15.

[17]Examples include Nikki Mandell and Bobbie Malone, Thinking Like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction (Wisconsin Historical Society, 2013). Library of Congress, Getting Started with Primary Sources: Teacher’s Guides and Primary Source Analysis Tool. Accessed April 2023.

[18]See Knowles, 1984 and other sources on andragogy previously referenced.

[19]Owen Kichizo Terry, “I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT. No Professor or Software Could Ever Pick Up on It,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2023.

[20] https://jmbravent.net/finding-trouble/

About the authors

name: Jay-Marie Bravent

institution: University of Kentucky

website: https://jmbravent.net/

name: Rebecca Wiggins, Ph.D.

I completed my PhD in 2018 at the University of Kentucky. As a 19th century Americanist with a focus on women and minority writers, my dissertation examines the way hospitality is used in 19th century narratives to humanize African Americans in the wake of the 1857 Dred Scott decision.  During my time at UK, I pioneered work with Jay-Marie Bravent, to bring first year writing students into the archives and get them directly involved with historical primary source material.  This work is the foundation of our submission here and our resources are still being used a decade later.

Currently I am an Office Management Specialist with the US Department of State and also freelance as a career coach for neurodivergent and marginalized individuals.