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you have only twenty minutes so you and your partner must plan carefully! after you present, you will facilitate discussion for about 45 mins. please set up before class starts!
what do presentations cover? First of all, think of these as gifts of some of your time and extra research to the class. They should not be focused on the text (we do that together in class) but should bring to the class something we don't all have (yet) in common -- some research that will enliven the contexts and "outsides" of the text.
Consider these, and while you may not cover them all, don't focus on too few either -- an overview matters:
• cover & blurbs: note language, positionings, claims and authority, key terms
• where published? what does that tell you? genre of writing? fields?
• google books, see reviews and positionings, maps and cloud tags, similar books and categories, refs trails and reputation
• who is this person? what biographizing helps?
• historical time & timings – what was going on in US, elsewhere, and otherwise?
NOTE THIS WILL TAKE RESEARCH BEYOND JUST READING THE TEXT. Your presentations are intended to ADD ADDITIONAL info beyond the text. Note that our discussions are not confined to critique and interpretation even when concerned with these and with what they in their turn may leave out or let go unnoticed.
Much of it can be done on the web or using Research Port.
Google searches give one kind of info: prizes, confs, profiles, institutional
Google Scholar as well as GBooks. Wikipedia.
• What assumptions does this material require US to reexamine? What does it suggest we might need to UNLEARN? (hypotheticals are okay here. more and less personal is fine.)
• What has the author focused on and why? (shrewd guesses are required for much of this.)
• What does that leave out? was leaving this out •a conscientious choice, •an effect of location (what sorts?), •a necessary limit (of what kind?), •a problem of unexamined assumptions (they are?), •an unintended consequence of specific choices (such as?), •an issue of historical timing and/or resources of information, •a generational situation of cumulative knowledge (in what fields and generations?)….
CONSIDER AND NOTE ESPECIALLY issues of diverging audiences and distributed authorships....
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