[acknowledge normalizing/idealizing disciplinary sheen/force of such advice/guidelinesas stated below and that people who do not fit idealizing norm are (can be) successful! also negotiate a ratio between one's expertise and assumption of a certain degree of 'mastery of the subject in relation to one's limits--that is what limits any assumption of so-called 'mastery'--keep your humility also in view and on display]
Clarity and Cogency of the Paper/Talk
Delivery/Presentation of the Paper/Talk
Q & A (both as presenter and as member of audience)
Conferencing Sociality and Professional Opportunities
Clarity and Cogency of the Paper/Talk
-Perhaps begin with some vivid question or anchoring quote or claim/point of view [and also may express appreciation for being on a panel and to host institution]
-Describe/Identify Interpretative or Critical Problem Early—don’t delay for too long though you may certainly need some summary and/or citation to set the stage
Example (1): In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the predominant patriarchal ideology dictates that the daughter (Portia) submit to the will of her father, yet the play seems to support the disobedient actions of a daughter (Jessica) who rebels against her father (Shylock), and one might argue that even Portia is supported in her cross-dressing actions as the young lawyer Balthazar. Why? How so? To what outcomes?
Example (2): Why does Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” depict apparent proto-feminist liberation from a relatively confining marriage in terms of passivity, sexual pleasure or release, and images that recall possession akin to rape?
-Situate your analysis in relation to selected scholarship (no time for a literature review so select two (three?) contrasting critics/lines of comparative inquiry)—most important: what difference does your reading make? What is at stake (losses/gains)?
Example (1) of Conflicting Scholarly Arguments: Differences in interpretation may help to frame an argument and debate. The quotes from the following critics illustrate opposing assessments of the degree to which the character Rosalind, in Shakepeare's As You Like It, ultimately manages on the one hand, to enlarge or to redefine what she (women) can do and be (Howard), or on the other hand, shows the disciplinary limits and ideological forces that return her character to dominant ways of being (Erickson):
“As You Like It is poised carefully on the razor’s edge separating fantasy from harsh reality. . . . [the play] is to a remarkable degree open to the infinite malleability of human beings and their social practices. . . . It is with the heroine, however, that As You Like It offers its richest dramatization of a figure who plays endlessly with the limits and possibilities of her circumstances. . . . this he/she, continues to the end to defy the fixed identities and the exclusionary choices of the everyday world, offering instead a world of multiple possibilities and transformable identities.” (Jean E. Howard, The Norton Shakespeare, 378-384)
“Male friendship, exemplified by the reconciliation of Duke Senior and Orlando, provides a framework that diminishes and contains Rosalind’s apparent power. . . . Concentration on Rosalind to the neglect of other issues distorts the overall design of As You Like It, one that is governed by male ends. . . . as the play returns to the normal world, [Rosalind] will be reduced to the traditional woman who is subservient to men” (Peter Erickson, Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare’s Drama 16, 21).
Example (2): see ways that graduate student K. Newman introduces and situates her thesis in relation to scholarship, in opening paragraphs of her paper “The Double-Edged Sword of Romance in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko” (a paper that she delivered at a conference in spring 2016)
-Moreover, can you state the difference that you bring to the conversation in the form of a thesis/hypothesis that addresses (answers or resolves) the problem you have identified?
Example: [for The Merchant of Venice (cited above)]: A cultural analysis (Greenblatt) claims that meanings and identities and relationships engage with specific ratios between mobility and constraint within specific cultural-historical contexts of force--that is, terms/identities move (are mobile) across a range of meanings and yet face culturally coded, enforced limits/constraints upon what a daughter is permitted to say or to do. The relation or ratio between degrees of mobility and constraint are determined by a principle of exchange-- the dominant Christian culture in Venice supports Jessica's transgressive rebellion against her Jewish father, because she offers the culture something in exchange (she pays for her mobility): she robs and flees Shylock in order to marry the Christian Lorenzo. Shylock can exchange (save) his life and some of his property by converting to Christianity.
-Use/include advance organizers—remind your audience what you are focusing on and where you are going—include clear transitions
-Keep Essay Tight, Sharply Focused Overall (a conference talk is typically limited to 12-15 minutes—perhaps 2,100 words for a 20-minute paper? So less for less time depending on your talking speed), and avoid sentences that are too complicated and too long but also let your ideas and relations among ideas shape your prose
-Conclude in manner that is open to avenues for further exploration and other contexts, perspectives, and questions
-As supplement/alternative, think of your talk as a story of your research, and include
why you decided to study the subject and why/how you framed the problem/question for your research
relate your struggles and discoveries
describe your moments of realization about the significance of your work/method/findings
consider, depending on your audience, whether connecting your talk to much larger contexts or current problems may be compelling and appropriate
consider interactive component—text/quote to prompt response from audience
See: Concise Guide to Critical Essay which includes this:
Example of structure of a critical essay:
(1) The issue;
(2) the claim;
(3) The supporting evidence;
(4) The explanation that connects the evidence to the claim about the subject;
(5) Rebuttals and qualifiers;
(6) The explanation that connects them to the claim about the subject.
Some of these stages or building blocks for the essay may be repeated (steps 2-6 or 3-6), and each stage should contribute to developing the argument and potential expressed in your thesis statement. Your thesis statement is a sentence-long summary of your argument . . . . an argument that you are going to examine with recourse to evidence from primary and secondary research. As stated above, typically each paragraph in the essay provides support for the argument or clearly analyzes opposing views to the argument.
To repeat and sum up—Some writers use the first paragraph to describe an interpretative, debatable problem that arises in a specific passage or for/in a character (and the relations of that character to others or to the text's cultural context), or to present a conflict of critical approaches to a topic or issue that is pertinent to or evident in the literary work.
This opening often includes reference to how the text or an aspect of it has been regarded by other scholars--what are some prior or 'traditional' ways of framing and understanding what's at stake in this text?
In contrast or in some kind of supplementary extension, what do you understand differently--what difference does your reading make/add and why is it significant/important to consider your line of analysis and argument? What is lost by sticking with prior views and what is gained by considering your counter-view or extension of the prior view to push its analysis further?
Can you state this difference that you bring to the conversation in the form of a thesis/hypothesis that addresses (answers or resolves) the problem you have identified?
Is your main claim (thesis) a stance that is arguable, debatable, significant (makes a difference)?
and also see fuller Advice on Critical Essays
Delivery/Presentation of the Paper/Talk
-Make eye contact (every 10-15 seconds?) and generally be lively, engaged, enthusiastic, and good-natured—smile? when you start, or at least project some energy/interest in what you are doing (!)
-Speak clearly, with sufficient volume/projection, inflection, varied pitch, modulation, emphasis
-Do not use/signal ‘air’ quotes
-Do not read quotes from literature in an affected, exaggerated/overly dramatic (unless somewhat ironic/comically so), or sing song manner (in my view, this also pertains to creative writers reading their own work)
-Try to talk more than to (simply) read
-Stand and move (be more relaxed than more rigid or formal, whether sitting or standing)
-Use visual aids, PowerPoint/Keynote when possible/appropriate, but this is not required
-Provide an overview of some sort
-Exercise a bit and stretch, breathe (from your diaphragm) prior to talk
-Have a back up plan if your main technology doesn’t work
-If using slides, limit the information on each slide (4-5 points?) and plan for about a minute per slide (per idea)
-Some advocate no more than six lines of text with six words per line for each slide
-24 pt sans-serif font? Helvetica or ?
-Keep track of your time
Q & A (both as presenter and as member of audience)
As Presenter:
-Keep responses to questions/topics conversational, relatively brief, exploratory, with posture (body language as well as intellectual) open to discovery while keeping your main thesis/evidence in view
-Meet, mingle with others following your session when you can
-Respond to e-mail queries
As Member of Audience:
-Pose questions and observations that keep the focus on the substance of the talk and its implications or connections to other/related topics
-Avoid paraphrase or restatement of presenter’s thesis in manner that seems to reduce its complexity to a commonplace or pithy claim
-Do not avoid either concise, expressive affirmation/praise or pointed, polite clarification or questioning of a premise
Conferencing Sociality and Professional Opportunities
-Meet, mingle, eat, don’t get drunk, be social (but of course not fawning/sycophantish!)
-Be ‘professional’ but also gauge level of informality to situation
-Attend other sessions, participate in the conference
-Listen well and perhaps restrain yourself a bit (that may mean curbing any tendencies to hold the floor for too long or to repeatedly make yourself the center of attention, however entertaining you may actually be!)
-Volunteer, if asked or if there’s an opportunity, to help with the conference or to moderate a panel or be a respondent to a session
Opportunity to introduce a noted/distinguished writer/scholar? Keep the introduction more concise than expansive, focused primarlily on the guest speaker rather than doing this via a substantial tracing and expressing of your own journey/engagement with the writer's work, however significant and important that has been to you--you can make such a point, but keep it brief because you risk seeming to make your introduction about you (particularly your affective capacities/sensitivities) rather than about the writer/work, and you might not need to cite everything the writer/scholar has published and every award that person has garnered.
Some online advice about conferences etc. (some of which I've cobbled from, purloined for some of the points above)
HASTAC advice on effective conference presentations
TAMU Writing Center on effective presentations
Columbia U. Effective Presentations