English 398:
Instructions for Group Presentations
General instructions: Each group will
be responsible for bringing into focus key issues in
the text assigned for the day of the presentation. In addition to any
critical sources already listed on the syllabus for that day, please
factor at least one other source into your group's presentation. (Note:
no critical sources are assigned for the day on which Group I will make
its presentation. This group should consult at least one outside source
that addresses the issue of film adaptations.) Your additional
sources can be scouted out in the library or taken from the web, but
wherever you look for them please do your best to make sure that the
sources are authoritative and reliable (see Lynn, pp. 257-58, and
Hacker, pp. 103-110, for strategies you can use to evaluate the
reliability of online sources). Please turn in, on the day of your
presentation, a list of any sources that your group consulted.
Your overall aim
as a group should be to talk about aspects of the text that the
critical sources helped you take notice of or caused you to think about
in productive ways. Alternatively, if your group feels that the sources
did not help you develop productive interpretations of the text, then
you should feel free to explain why that was the case. In addition, try
to determine what approach or approaches (New Critical,
reader-response, feminist, deconstructive, historical, etc.) inform the
critical sources you consult, and discuss how the critics' approaches
shaped your thinking about the particular issue you investigated.
You might want to
adopt the following general strategy as you prepare your presentation.
First, isolate a number of key issues in the text that you feel are
worth focusing on in the presentation. Each person in the group can
focus on examining one of those issues in light of the class readings
and the outside source(s)
you are consulting. Then, during the presentation itself, someone can
give a kind of overview statement of the key issues, followed by each
member of the group zooming in on his or her particular topic of
discussion. If a group has 5 people, for example, it might want to
identify 5 key issues,
and have each member of the group focus on one of those during the
presentation.
Group I: Tuesday, October 17
(Presentation on film adaptation of Ghost World)
Please sign up here:
Groups II: Thursday, November 9 (Presentation on Wolfe's The Colored
Museum and/or Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues")
Please sign up here:
Group III: Tuesday, November 14 (Presentation on Wright, Welty, Silko,
and/or Momaday)
Please sign up here:
Group IV: Tuesday, November 21 (Presentation using ideas from narrative
theory to interpret McEwan's Atonement)
Please sign up here: