Group Presentation Directions

choose a book and its topic upon which to give an online presentation in which you teach something about the book to the class. There are a variety of ways your group may deliver your presentation, starting with a Powerpoint or Google Slides:

• Your presentation must be a minimum of 15 slides (20 maximum).
• Your group must propose a clearly, stated thesis that is supported by a minimum of 3 scholarly books and/or articles (a minimum of 1 quote from each of your sources must be included on your presentation slides, properly cited in MLA format). I will supply you with your first scholarly article (one that I will already have vetted and deemed appropriate for the topic.)
• Your title slide and thesis slide (which should be first in your presentation) and works cited slide do not count for the required number of slides.
• You must also have at least 3 quotes from your book.
• In addition, your group will include 2 discussion questions in your presentation that are based on material your group has covered. These questions must engage the class in points of discussion and will be included in peer reviews.
• Recording a voice-over for your presentation is optional; however, doing so makes a more lively connection with your classmates.If you decide not to record, please be sure to use the Notes section to include what you might have said during a live presentation. (For example, put your quotes on slides, put your explanation of how the quote supports your point in the Notes.)Please be aware that if you post a PDF version of your presentation, the Notes section is not available to viewers.

You may either gather your own group together in order to choose a book or you may sign up for a book and see whom else chooses the same book/topic. You will need to work on your presentation via Canvas Collaboration and Google Drive.Please do not set up Google docs/slides independent of our Canvas class. Presentations must be posted on Canvas as Turnitin Assignment AND in Discussions for peer review.

Group Book Presentation Topics

The Hunger Games

1.L. Frank Baum wrote that he intended The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to be an American fairy tale. The Hunger Games trilogy is said to draw upon specifically American traditions as it envisions a future. Compare/Contrast Oz with Panem.

2.The world depicted in The Hunger Games is of gross inequality, mass surveillance, brutal crushing of dissent, where the young are sacrificed and where there is real hunger. A fantasy of the future? So go Katniss Everdeen, as they say: “Happy Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favour.” After all, it’s just a game.There seems to be a trend in young adult fiction that uses the framework of “games” in which young heroes are at the center of the action, and, are often sacrificed.Discuss and explore.

3.Bioethics and The Hunger Games:What are the effects of artificially created hybrid creatures on characters in The Hunger Games and in our society? What are the effects on and basic rights of the organisms themselves given their unnatural entry into the world? What impact might these hybrids have on native species? To consider the consequences of genetically engineered organisms in our own society, research current practices and policies, as well as contemporary case studies of genetically engineered organisms.For example:?? What is genetic engineering (GE)?

?? How does the biology in this book relate to our lives in America?

?? Why did the leaders in Panem create only male jabberjays? How did this plan backfire? Do you see any parallels with actual genetically modified organisms?

4.According toLori L. Parks and Jennifer P. Yamashiro in their article “Consumed: Food in The Hunger Games” : In this futuristic tale, as in the historical past, food divides rich and poor, empowered and oppressed, pure and putrid. Food provides a clear lens to analyze power and rebellion through theory, surveillance and the art historical genre of memento mori (remember you will die). How does food represent and enact power? How does food send moral and political messages? How does the government control and, in fact, author the lives of the citizens? How do Katniss’ rebellions reflect, represent and magnify the crisis of the state?

5.Reality TV

Suzanne “Collins has said that she decided to write ‘an updated version of the Roman Gladiator games’ (qtd. in Margolis), one that would delineate her fear that ‘today people see so many reality shows and dramas that when real news is on, its impact is completely lost on them’ (qtd. in Blasingame 727).In addition, Collins seeks to explicate “her anxiety about the dangers inherent in the postmodern confusion of ‘acceptable’ fantasy and ‘unacceptable’ reality.”How does Collins achieve conveying her fears.Does she offer any solutions?How might The Hunger Games be a reflection of our times?

6. Songs

According to Jon Fitzgerald and Philip Hayward in their article “Mountain Airs, Mockingjays, and Modernity:Songs and their Significance in The Hunger Games,” “songs represent an unusually important thematic element of The Hunger Games‘s various media texts, demonstrating how song elements can be closely integrated with plot and thematics, rather than simply serving as peripheral sonic adornments that signal future difference and/or dystopia.”

Sample Claim from the article:“A song, characterized by the novel/film as a traditional Appalachian ‘mountain air’, functions as a narrative and musical motif in the novel and film that binds Katniss and her District 12 to a (mythical) pre-modern, pre-dystopian past that gives her the strength to confront and battle the dystopian modernity represented by the Capitol and its inhumane, gladiatorial imposition” (Fitzgerald and Hayward).

7.According to Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark in their “Introduction” to their collection of scholarly essays, Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games:“Folded into the truly epic scope of this series are multiple, sometimes contradictory narrative genres: a) a war story that is as well an antiwar treatise, b) a romance that is never unreservedly romantic, c) a science fiction adventure that also serves as grim social satire, d) an identity novel that is compellingly ambivalent about gender roles, and — like other great epics — e) a tragedy depicting the desperate human need for heroes and the terrible cost of heroism. Even its futuristic location is evocative: f) the dystopian Panem is built on the ruins of the continent we call North America, its inhabitable land drastically reduced through a cascade of natural and man-made disasters. The setting is painfully easy to imagine. As a pure story, The Hunger Games trilogy has a cultural significance that moves through and beyond the postmodern world

Choose either a, b, c, d, e, or f (one topic, not all of them) to explore and develop with a clearly-stated thesis and scholarly support.