Teaching Paleography (workshop)

For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.

This was a December 2009 workshop.

This three-day workshop explored strategies for teaching paleography at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. The workshop aimed to provide participants with the skills and resources to teach the English secretary hand, whether as a directed study, a single-session practicum in a topical seminar, or a semester-length skills course. It built on aspects of Dr. Wolfe’s Folger Institute skills course, Introduction to Early Modern English Paleography (skills course). Participants discussed the challenges they face due to limited manuscript resources on their own campuses. They consulted materials available on the web, in print, and in other collections. Drawing from these and digitized Folger materials, they compiled a set of paleographical exercises and pedagogical methods for teaching paleography at their home institutions. Applicants need not have had experience in teaching paleography, but proficiency in reading secretary hand was required.

Director: Heather Wolfe is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Author of numerous articles on early modern manuscripts, she has most recently edited The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680 (2007) and The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608: A Facsimile Edition of Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.232 (2007).

Faculty: Mary Robertson, the William A. Moffett Chief Curator of Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, author of the Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (1982); and Gavin Alexander, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English at University of Cambridge, collaborator on "English Handwriting 1500–1700: An Online Course," and author of Writing After Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney, 1586–1640 (2006).