Leveraging Letters: How a Citizen Archivist Program Intersects with Rhetorical Analysis, AI, and Accessibility

Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation

Conference Strand

Critical Literacy

Target Audience

Higher Education

Second Target Audience

Higher Education

Location

Ballroom C

Relevance

This proposal highlights librarian-faculty collaboration that embeds archival practice into coursework, applies information literacy, and integrates AI into analysis. Students transcribe 19th-century letters, reflecting on authorship and context, and engage in dialogue about archival content and AI’s role; such as building inquiry skills, critical awareness, and reflexive analysis throughout the process.

Proposal

This presentation explores a collaborative project between the University Archives and an English professor, engaging both graduate and undergraduate students in hands-on archival work that enriches their study of writing technologies, linguistic structures, and rhetorical practices. Central to this partnership is Gardner-Webb University’s Citizen Archivist Program, which invites students to transcribe handwritten historical documents, making them more accessible to the public through the university’s institutional repository.

Graduate students in the course Technology and Literacy and undergraduates in Grammar and Style integrate the Citizen Archivist experience into their study of texts and language. In the graduate course, students examine the development of writing technologies from early written works to contemporary digital texts, analyzing how physical forms of writing shape production, reception, and literacy practices. This foundation informs their transcription and analysis of mid-19th century letters (1850–1870), allowing them to consider not only historical context but also the relationship between modality, syntax, and the technologies of writing.

At the undergraduate level, assignments such as “style shorts” and “style analyses” help students experiment with writing structures and rhetorical functions, applying these skills to the Citizen Archivist letter project. By transcribing archival documents, students learn to identify grammatical structures, shifts in style, and rhetorical choices while also contextually reading these within the broader historical and familial contexts of the letters. After completing a style analysis of the transcribed letter, students upload their transcription to an AI model to generate a secondary style analysis. Then, students participate in a classroom exercise comparing and discussing their style analysis against the AI model.

Both graduate and undergraduate students reflect on their transcription and research process through structured discussion. These reflections emphasize critical literacy skills, including analyzing rhetorical purpose, audience, and context, as well as understanding shifts in language and style over time. Importantly, students also consider the ethical and cultural significance of contributing to public access of primary sources.

This project highlights how archives, writing instruction, and digital repositories intersect to foster meaningful, hands-on learning that connects the past with the present.

Short Description

This presentation highlights a collaboration between University Archives and an English professor that integrates archival practice into graduate and undergraduate coursework. Through Gardner-Webb’s Citizen Archivist Program, students transcribe mid-19th century letters, analyzing linguistic structures, rhetorical choices, and historical context. The project bridges manual transcription with AI-enhanced style analysis, as students compare their own work with machine-generated results. These activities foster critical literacy, reflection, and engagement while demonstrating how archives and writing instruction connect historical documents with contemporary learning and public access.

Keywords

Grammar and Style, Citizen Archivist Program, Archival Transcription, Linguistic Structures, Rhetorical Analysis, Critical Literacy, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Repository, Primary Sources, Open Access

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

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Feb 6th, 11:15 AM Feb 6th, 12:00 PM

Leveraging Letters: How a Citizen Archivist Program Intersects with Rhetorical Analysis, AI, and Accessibility

Ballroom C

This presentation explores a collaborative project between the University Archives and an English professor, engaging both graduate and undergraduate students in hands-on archival work that enriches their study of writing technologies, linguistic structures, and rhetorical practices. Central to this partnership is Gardner-Webb University’s Citizen Archivist Program, which invites students to transcribe handwritten historical documents, making them more accessible to the public through the university’s institutional repository.

Graduate students in the course Technology and Literacy and undergraduates in Grammar and Style integrate the Citizen Archivist experience into their study of texts and language. In the graduate course, students examine the development of writing technologies from early written works to contemporary digital texts, analyzing how physical forms of writing shape production, reception, and literacy practices. This foundation informs their transcription and analysis of mid-19th century letters (1850–1870), allowing them to consider not only historical context but also the relationship between modality, syntax, and the technologies of writing.

At the undergraduate level, assignments such as “style shorts” and “style analyses” help students experiment with writing structures and rhetorical functions, applying these skills to the Citizen Archivist letter project. By transcribing archival documents, students learn to identify grammatical structures, shifts in style, and rhetorical choices while also contextually reading these within the broader historical and familial contexts of the letters. After completing a style analysis of the transcribed letter, students upload their transcription to an AI model to generate a secondary style analysis. Then, students participate in a classroom exercise comparing and discussing their style analysis against the AI model.

Both graduate and undergraduate students reflect on their transcription and research process through structured discussion. These reflections emphasize critical literacy skills, including analyzing rhetorical purpose, audience, and context, as well as understanding shifts in language and style over time. Importantly, students also consider the ethical and cultural significance of contributing to public access of primary sources.

This project highlights how archives, writing instruction, and digital repositories intersect to foster meaningful, hands-on learning that connects the past with the present.