Presentation Assignment Example

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Below is another example of a presentation and group project. It requires groups to read a text not assigned in class and then give a presentation on it using specified criteria. Following the assignment, you will find a list of potential texts for students to choose from as well as a sample grade sheet:

E238
Spring 2009

Collaborative Paper & Presentation

Fifteen percent of your semester grade will be determined by a collaborative paper (1,200-1,800 words) that you write with two or three of your classmates (10%), and a 15-20 minute presentation that you perform in front of the class to demonstrate what you learned while writing the paper together (5%). The paper should address a twentieth-century writer, novel, or story collection that we weren’t able to read together as a class, but whose work would readily fit into our discussions. What lasting contributions have this writer and his or her writing made to the world? Why, in a future twentieth-century fiction class, should this writer’s work be included as required reading?

A list of potential writers and books is available in the Writing Studio FILE FOLDERS, but if your group would prefer to study a different writer or book, please contact me. Your group should arrange to meet somewhere during the next class period to discuss its interests and options. Please email me by Friday with your group’s chosen author so that I can help you begin to think about research possibilities.

Each paper must include the following basic features:

1200-1800 words of argument (Works Cited page does not count)
Well-supported argument interpreting the significance of a writer’s work
Critical context, including historical, biographical, and/or cultural
Attention to questions raised by critics about the writer’s work
Statements by the writer in question
Concrete and specific language
Six or more sources, at least five of which must be secondary (not by your writer)
Parenthetical in-text citations formatted according to MLA, “Like this” (Bowen 19).
A list of Works Cited, formatted according to MLA

Each presentation must include:

Fifteen to 20 minutes of presentation time
Visual aids, such as overheads or PowerPoint material
Participation in roughly equal measure by each group member
Well-supported argument interpreting the significance of a writer’s work
Critical context, including historical, biographical, and/or cultural
Attention to questions raised by critics about the writer’s work
Statements by the writer in question
Critical connection to the writers and novels we’ve been studying

Each member of the group will receive the same grade on both research paper and presentation (unless someone fails to participate in the presentation, which = 0%), so the group must ensure that everyone does a fair share of the required work.

Twentieth-Century Fiction
E238.11, TR 4:00-5:15
Some Notable Twentieth-Century Authors

Author	Some Prominent Works
Abish, Walter	Alphabetical Africa; Minds Meet; In the Future Perfect
Aiken, Conrad	Blue Voyage
Alison, Dorothy	Bastard out of Carolina
Anderson, Sherwood	Winesburg, Ohio; Dark Laughter
Apple, Max	Zip; Free Agents
Auster, Paul	City of Glass; In the Country of Last Things; Moon Palace
Baldwin, James	Go Tell It on the Mountain; Giovanni’s Room; Another Country
Banks, Russell	Success Stories; Affliction; The Darling
Barnes, Djuna	Nightwood
Barth, John	The Floating Opera; The Sot-Weed Factor; Giles Goat-Boy; Chimera
Bellow, Saul	Henderson the Rain King; Herzog; Humboldt’s Gift; A Thief; Ravelstein
Bowen, Elizabeth	The Death of the Heart
Bowles, Paul	The Sheltering Sky; Let It Come Down; Three Tales; Too Far from Home
Boyle, T. C.	Greasy Lake; The Tortilla Curtain; Drop City; Talk Talk; Tooth and Claw
Buck, Pearl S.	The Good Earth
Bukowski, Charles	Tales of Ordinary Madness; Ham on Rye;
Bulgakov, Mikhail	The Master and Margarita
Burroughs, William S.	The Naked Lunch; The Ticket that Exploded; Nova Express; Cities of the Red Night
Capote, Truman	Other Voices, Other Rooms; In Cold Blood
Carr, Caleb	The Alienist
Cather, Willa	O Pioneers!; My Anotnia; Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chabon, Michael	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Chandler, Raymond	The Big Sleep; The Long Goodbye
Cheever, John	The Short Stories of John Cheever
Conrad, Joseph	Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; The Secret Agent; The Secret Sharer
Coover, Robert	Pricksongs & Descants; The Public Burning; A Night at the Movies
Cortazar, Julio	Hopscotch; Blowup and Other Stories
DeLillo, Don	White Noise; Libra; The Body Artist; Falling Man
Dixon, Stephen	Fall & Rise; Garbage; Love and Will; Gould; 30: Pieces of a Novel
Doctorow, E. L.	The Book of Daniel; Ragtime; World’s Fair; The Waterworks; City of God
Dos Passos, John	Manhattan Transfer; The 42nd Parallel; Mid-Century
Dreiser, Theodore	Sister Carrie; Jennie Gerhardt; An American Tragedy
Elkin, Stanley	Boswell; A Bad Man; The Living End; George Mills; The Magic Kingdom
Ellison, Ralph	Invisible Man
Erdrich, Louise	Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks
Ford, Richard	The Sports Writer; Rock Springs
Forster, E. M.	A Passage to India
Gardner, John	Grendel; The Sunlight Dialogues; Mickelsson’s Ghosts
Gilchrist, Ellen	In the Land of Dreamy Dreams; Vistory Over Japan
Gordimer, Nadine	July’s People
Gordon, Mary	Men and Angels; Temporary Shelter; Spending; Pearl
Greene, Graham	The Heart of the Matter; The Power and the Glory
Gurganus, Allan	Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All; Plays Well With Others
Hammett, Dashiell	The Maltese Falcon; The Thin Man
Heinlein, Robert H.	Stranger in a Strange Land
Heller, Joseph	Cath-22; Something Happened
Irving, John	The World According to Garp; A Prayer for Meany Owen
Ishiguro, Kazuo	Remains of the Day
James, Henry	The Wings of the Dove; The Ambassadors; The Golden Bowl
Jong, Erica	Fear of Flying; How to Save Your Own Life; Inventing Memory
Joyce, James	Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kennedy, William	Ironweed
Kesey, Ken	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Sometimes a Great Notion
Kingston, Maxine Hong	The Woman Warrior
Lawrence, D. H.	Sons and Lovers; The Rainbow; Women in Love
LeGuin, Ursula	A Wizard of Earthsea; The Left Hand of Darkness
Lessing, Doris	The Golden Notebook
Lewis, Sinclair	Main Street; Babbitt
Llosa, Mario Vargas	The Time of the Hero; The Green House; The War of the End of the World; Death in the Andes
London, Jack	The Call of the Wild; Martin Eden
Lowry, Malcolm	Under the Volcano
Lurie, Alison	Imaginary Friends; Foreign Affairs
McCarthy, Mary	A Charmed Life; The Group; Cannibals and Missionaries
Mailer, Norman	The Naked and the Dead; The Deer Park; An American Dream; The Armies of the Night
Malamud, Bernard	The Natural; The Magic Barrel; The Fixer
Momaday, N. Scott	House Made of Dawn; The Way to Rainy Mountain
Moore, Lorrie	Self-Help
Munro, Alice	Lives of Girls and Women; Open Secrets; The Love of a Good Woman
Naipaul, V. S.	A House for Mr. Miswas, A Bend in the River
O’Connor, Flannery	Wise Blood; A Good Man Is Hard to Find; Everything that Rises Must Converge
Olsen, Tillie	Tell Me a Riddle
Ozick, Cynthia	The Cannibal Galaxy; Shawl
Paley, Grace	The Little Disturbances of Man; Later the Same Day
Percy, Walker	The Moviegoer; Love in the Ruins; The Second Coming
Piercy, Marge	Woman on the Edge of Time; Fly Away Home
Pynchon, Thomas	V.; The Crying of Lot 49
Rand, Aynd	Atlas Shrugged; The Fountainhead
Reed, Ishmael	The Free-Lance Pallbearers; Mumbo Jumbo; Flight to Canada
Robinson, Mailynne	Housekeeping; Gilead
Roth, Philip	Portnoy’s Complaint; The Great American Novel; The Plot Against America; Everyman
Rushdie, Salmon	Midnight’s Children; The Satanic Verses
Silko, Leslie Marmon	Ceremony
Singer, Isaac Bashevis	Grimpel the Fool; The Manor; The King of the Fields
Smith, Lee	Fair and Tender Ladies; Me and My Baby View the Eclipse
Stegner, Wallace	Big Rock Candy Mountain; Angle of Repose; Crossing to Safety
Stein, Gertrude	Three Lives
Steinbeck, John	Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden
Stone, Robert	Dog Soldiers; Children of Light; Bear and his Daughter
Styron, William	Lie Down in Darkness; Sophie’s Choice
Sukenick, Ronald	The Death of the Novel and Other Stories; Blown Away
Tan, Amy	The Joy Luck Club
Taylor, Peter	Collected Stories; Summoned to Memphis
Theroux, Paul	The Mosquito Coast; The London Embassy; Chicago Loop
Toole, John Kennedy	A Confederacy of Dunces
Updike, John	Rabbit, Run; The Centaur
Vidal, Gore	The City and the Pillar; Myra Breckinridge; Hollywood; Creation; Live from Golgotha
Vonnegut, Kurt	Cat’s Cradle; Slaughterhouse-Five; Galapagos
Walker, Alice	Meridian; You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down; The Color Purple
Warren, Robert Penn	All the King’s Men
Waugh, Evelyn	A Handful of Dust; Scoop
Welty, Eudora	A Curtain of Green
West, Nathaniel	Miss Lonelyhearts; The Day of the Locust
White, Edmund	A Boy’s Own Story; The Beautiful Room is Empty
Wideman, John Edgar	Damballah; Philadelphia Fire
Wolfe, Thomas	Look Homeward, Angel; You Can’t Go Home Again
Wolff, Tobias	The Barracks Thief
Woolf, Virginia	Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse
Yates, Richard	Revolutionary Road; Young Hearts Crying

E238-11
NAMES
Tom, Dick, and Harry
Collaborative Presentation Feedback

3-- Writer’s Significance (X5): Demonstrates the importance of the writer and his work to both twentieth-century literature in general and to at least one specific novel we’ve discussed in class by carefully comparing dominant themes, artistic struggles, critical approaches, and/or reception by critics.

5--        Critical Context (X3): Presents historical, biographical, and cultural background that helps the audience to situate the writer in the important world events and artistic questions of his time.

4--        Presentation Mechanics (X2): Group members each present for a roughly equal portion of 15-20 minutes, and the visual aid(s) presented to the audience effectively help to inform and expand the audience’s grasp of the writer’s “Significance” and/or “Context,” above.

TOTAL 38 / 50pts 76%

Comments: The critical context provided on Hunter Thompson’s rise to cult status and the impact of the 1960s counter-culture on his writing, especially on Fear and Loathing, was the strongest and most compelling portion of this presentation. Each member spent a little over five minutes presenting this information, but the visual aids, pictures from Thompson’s youth, added only a little to the critical context of the presentation. More interesting might have been examples of the artwork done by Ralph Steadman that you mentioned several times has been associated with Thompson’s writing and his “Gonzo journalism” in general. The presentation also might have made stronger connections between Thompson’s work and those of his contemporaries and others who came later to be associated with the “New Journalism” his work helped to define—Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and much more recently William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. New Journalism was hardly mentioned, in fact, much less defined or described. And what was Thompson’s connection to the work we’ve discussed this semester? To the “magical realism” of Garcia Marquez, for instance, or Fitzgerald’s portrait of the “American Dream” sought in The Great Gatsby?