Prof. Derek P. Royal

ENG 202 – Multi-Ethnic American Literature

Author/Text Presentation

During the semester you will choose to present on one of the six authors and texts we are reading. This will be a group presentation with 2-3 of you working together on this assignment. There should be both an oral and a written component to your presentation, with the latter being a more formal presentation of the issues you raise in the former. In your presentation you should do the following:

• Introduce the author and give an overview of his/her career.
• Highlight what you have found to be the most significant works by your author and explore why these works are considered critically (or commercially) important.
• Introduce the text by that author that we are reading for class by indicating the book’s place within the author’s overall body or work.
• Discuss the basic literary elements of the work, e.g., theme, character, plot, setting, point of view, symbolism, irony. In other words, what are those things that characterize the book.
• Look for any interviews that the authors might have given in the past several years. NOTE: for those of you who might be more bold (and who want to show me what you’re really made of), you could attempt to contact the author her/himself and see what happens. You never know how helpful authors might be.
• Give a brief overview of the criticism surrounding this narrative. In particular, you might want to look at:
• how the book was originally received by reviewers when it first came out
• what kind of controversies, if any, surrounded the book’s publication
• how the book has been read within its particular ethnic community (for instance, how did Asian Americans see Bone when it first came out, what was the reaction to The Known World from the African American community, etc.)
• what kind of scholarly criticism might be out there
• the way this book may (or may not) be used in the classroom
• Explore some of the problems you might see in the book—feel free to be critical in a constructive way.
• Since many of you are in education, it would be a good idea to speculate on how you would teach this book to high school or even junior high school classes. (Or, would you even consider teaching it to a high school or junior high school class?)

On the day of presentation, you should provide me with a 4-5 page formal essay, jointly written and edited by the group, that encapsulates the issues you bring up and discuss in class.

Remember that this is a group effort, which means that everyone in the group must participate in the class presentation as well as contribute to the writing/editing of the essay. So you’ll need to assign responsibilities accordingly. (In other words, if someone’s really good at doing research, that person can do a survey of the criticism. Or if one member is a good writer, she/he could write up an initial draft that can be critiqued by the others.) You will need to exchange contact information with your fellow group members and make arrangements to meet several times outside of class. Feel free to use any sort of media in your class presentation, but please keep in mind a couple of things: 1) if you choose to use visual media of any kind you must check with me at least a week before your presentation so that I can make arrangements with Media Services, and 2) make sure that the glitz or dazzle of any media that you use does not overshadow the content of your presentation.