MidYear Undergraduate Research Symposium Book Club Presentations

Overview
If youve read carefully enough, you will notice that you and your book club groups are responsible for
presenting at the MYS. This is an annual event at the University that features the work of over 500
students on the last day of classes of the fall semester.
What Youll Present
During the MYS, you and your book club group will be responsible for a twelve minute presentation. You
should expect to present for the entire twelve minutes. You will be asked to give a general overview and
review of the book, and you will be asked to give special attention to the thematic significance of the book
as well as the ways the research you did over the course of the semester helped you to determine that
theme.
Wholl You Present With/To
You will present with some members of our class, but you will also present with other students from other
classes presenting on other topics. Your audience will be other students, other faculty, University
Administrators, and other members of the BSU community. Its a big day on campus, and you should feel
free to invite your parents. You should most definitely invite your book club and study skills advisors.
When Youll Present
All of you will be scheduled during one of the two hours that are devoted to ENGL101/144. You will not
need to miss any other classes or any other obligations to participate. Participation is required, and failure
to do so will seriously jeopardize your grade for the book club portion of ENGL101 and ENGL144.
Workshop/Dress Rehearsal
Once you finish your book (and youll notice on the syllabus that I suggest a day to be done with the book,
you will work on your book club presentation in your book club AND your study skills sessions. In class
the week before the MYS you will do a dry run of your presentation in our class. I will give you feedback to
help you improve your presentation so that it is at its best when we present it to the entire University.

Details
As I mentioned in the overview, you have twelve minutes to present. You should use exactly twelve
minutes, not more and not less. During those twelve minutes you should include the following:
1. A brief, and not boring summary of the plot of your novel. This should not go on for more
than three minutes. Too much summary is boring.
2. A brief overview of the important themes of the novel. In other words, what is the thesis,
essentially, of the novel? What is the author trying to get you to think about and understand by writing
this particular story? This is the most important part of your presentation. It is also the most creative. You
have a lot of freedom to come up with the best way to present the theme to the audience (more on this in a
minutes).
3. A brief overview of what you learned from doing research related to the book, and how it helped you to
understand the novelin terms of plot, theme, and character development. This is the second most
important part of the presentation. It is related to what you need to do in number two. Here again, how
you present this information to your audience, how you connect it to the theme/thesis/big idea of the
novel can be as creative as you want to make it.

4. A short, review of the book. Would you recommend the book? To whom? Why? If you wouldnt
recommend the book, why not? Please avoid saying things like its stupid. If it is stupid, than explain,
with care and thought, why it is stupid.

That is what you need to include in terms of content during your twelve minutes. As for presentation, how
you develop this content into twelve minutes is up to you. Here are some ideas students have done in
previous years.

Make the movie trailer for the novel. This involved writing a script and putting together a
short movie/powerpoint slide show that looked sort of like what a movie trailer for the movie
version of your book would look like. The movie trailer was not the full fifteen minutesthe
students did a regular power-point for the summary & review sections. They explained how the
movie trailer represented the theme of the movie, and they took time to highlight how the
research contributed. They also included ideas for casting the moviewhat characters would be
played by what stars and why.

Talk show discussion like Oprah between main characters about significant ideas in
the novel. They had some characters from the novel and then other characters that allowed the
book characters to talk about ideas, fears, anger that the group felt like they would have expressed
about what happened in the book. It turned out to be a really effective way to combine research
and theme. Variation on this: the courtroom drama you cant handle the truth scene. In this
version, instead of a talk show, the characters interact in a court in front of a jury. This only works
if you have a novel where a crime or potential crime or law suit could realistically be part of the
story.

The Happy-ending Remake. This is a tricky one. Students made a video of a scene from the
booka really important scene. Then they red-made the scene the way they wished it happened.
Then they explained to the audience why they wished it happened that way, but why, in the end,
the author didnt write it that wayhow the scene, as written by the author, embodied the theme
of the book.

These are just some of the things students have done over the years. There have also seen a lot of basic
powerpoint presentations. And those work too. You are a clever bunch and, as I said, good presenters. So I
look forward to what you might come up with.

Other Things
On the day of the presentation, please dress decently. Dont wear anything that it would embarrass you to
wear to your grandmothers funeral. Wear something that might be considered business casual. So no
hoodies or sweats. Decent pants and a decent shirt and decent shoes are the goal.

Introduce yourselves to the audience, tell them the title of the book and who the author is, and clue people
in as to why you are doing this presentation. So set things up. They are not part of our class and do not
know any of these things.
Remember to thank, by name, your book club facilitators for their help with this project and the entire
semester.
There is lots of food all day at the event, so make sure you take advantage of that. Eat for free all day on
the schools dime.

I know that this might seem like a rather intimidating way to end the semester, but you are all very good
presenters. As long as you put in the work and time to make these presentations strong and interesting,
you will do very well. You will be presenting in front of people who want you to do well. Additionally, this
is a first opportunity to start to become involved in meaningful academic co-curricular activities like
Undergraduate Research. You can put this presentation on a resume. It is my hope that this experience
will launch many of you into a very successful, academically rich life at BSU. I always look forward to
these days.