Feminist Anthropology

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In-Class Presentations

A significant part (20%) of the course grade will come from your in-class prester. For each book-week, there will presenters with various roles. The intent of these presentations is to prepare you for the very same type of tasks you will be expected to perform in senior seminars or if you go on to graduate studies.

Book-Discussant: What was the goal of this book? How has it been received in academia? Where does it fit in and what does it reference? Read through critical reviews of the book in anthropological or feminist academic journals and try to understand where the author is located within the discipline and what the response to the book has been.

Author-Discussant: Where did the author receive their PhD? Who did they study with? What fellowships did they receive? What other publications have they made? Present as full of an overview of the author's work as you can. Read through reviews of the author's others works in order to give us an overview of what their life's work has been, and where this book in particular fits in it.

For either role, there are some steps you should take to prepare:

1. Read the book thoroughly, at least once, preferably twice. Highlight and mark key areas. Make a short summary of the major points and your contentions. You should already be doing this for your précis.
2. Go online to the Wallace Library's List of Databases and scroll down to anthropology. A good place to start is the Expanded Academic Index.
   • Search for articles by the author. Read the abstracts. These are good ways to get a general idea of what the author has been researching recently.
   • Search for book reviews of the books you're reading. Do this after you've read the book as they won't make as much sense beforehand. Try to build a general sense of how the book was received by other academics. How is it contributing to the field? Was it seen as innovative or redundant? Controversial or ground-breaking?
   • You might actually have to go to the (horrors!) physical library to look at actual journals as not all of them are online. Annual Review of Anthropology is a good journal to look at. Signs, American Ethnologist and American Anthropologist have a lot of good book reviews.
3. Prepare your presentation. You can use Powerpoint if you want. Handouts are always good, but be careful of writing too much on the Powerpoint slides or handouts. The problem is that your fellow students will end up reading the screen/handout and will tune you out. So moderation is good. Use bullet-points, for example.
4. You can read from prepared notes or talk your presentation extemporaneously. Whichever you choose, you should have a coherent narrative.
5. Unless you have a lot of hubris, it's good to beta-test your presentation at least once on your roommate and then on the professor or preceptor. Remember, this is a major part of your grade, so you don't want to do poorly on it.
6. You are allowed to present more than twice. The two highest presentation grades will be counted towards your final grade.

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