We will share the work of our research papers in a poster session on Wednesday and Friday in Week 14. We will present in two sessions so that only five or six students are presenting at once. The rest of the class is responsible for showing up as an attentive and engaged audience.

The idea of a research poster is that it includes all of the central elements of your research paper in summary form. It is a prompt for the viewer and for you, the presenter. In a poster session you stand in front of your poster and share your research with visitors who pass by.

How to prepare for your poster presentation?

• Come to class on Monday with a printed set of pages that we will use to create your poster (more details below)
• Be prepared with a one to two minute (maximum) elevator speech for your project – enough to explain the main idea of your paper and leave your listener interested to know more. Be prepared to elaborate on your research question, historiography, sources, interpretations, etc. and answer questions from your audience
• Dress professionally or semi professionally (if you want more details look up “business professional” or “business casual”)

On Monday we will prepare our posters. I will supply poster board, tape, and scissors. You will come to class with a set of printed pages (yes, in physical form) that summarizes your project.

The pages that you should print (and where they will go on your poster) include the following:

1. Paper Title, Name of Class, Professor, & Your Name (center top)
2. Overview (left top)
   1. Heading: “Overview”
   2. A few bullet points that explain your topic, your research question, and your thesis
3. Context (left middle)
   1. Heading: “Context”
   2. Three to five bullet points that provide essential background for your paper
4. Historiography (center)
   1. Heading: “Historiography”
   2. A description – again in bullet points – of the secondary source(s) that you use to frame your topic
   3. You may want to add a word on your critical perspective (in a bullet point or a sentence)
5. Corpus (center)
   1. Heading: “Corpus”
   2. A description – in bullet points – of the corpus of primary sources that you have examined
6. Analysis (center)
   1. Heading: Analysis
   2. A description of your central examples and your analysis
   3. You might choose to do this in one, two, or three pages
7. Conclusions (right top)
   1. Heading “Conclusions”
   2. Two or three bullet points that address the significance of your argument. So what?
8. Bibliography (in Chicago format) (right bottom)
   1. Heading “Bibliography”
   2. A list of the key primary and secondary sources that you have used (will use) in your paper
9. Four half-page sized photographs to illustrate (these can fit in between the pages on your poster)
   1. print on separate pages or cut out photographs

Some recommendations:

• For the title page, use the largest font size that will fit. For titles, try 72 to 80 pt. For your name on the title page, try 64pt.
• For the individual pages, use 48pt for the heading (centered and underlined), 36pt for body text (left justified).
• Don’t use a lot of words! This should be a very condensed summary of your topic

And a note for the audience:

• Please don’t leave class during the poster session
• Your role is to be engaged listeners – listen carefully to the brief pitch, read the poster, and ask questions of the presenter about the work they have done