Overview & Guidelines
For your final project, due during the last week of class, you will design a PowerPoint presentation organized around a major theme in the humanities.
1. Select Theme
Select a theme around which your presentation will be developed. Examples of possible themes include:
love
happiness
death/the afterlife
morality
war
imperialism
mythology
nature
animals
religion/spirituality
fertility
class, status, power
or a topic of your choosing
2. Get Approval
Send your theme to your instructor (via the Theme Submission Assignment) for approval by the date listed on your Course Syllabus.
Note: 5 points are allocated for acquiring topic approval from your instructor.
3. Select Artwork
Once approval has been granted, begin selecting artworks that support your theme. You must include 5 works total that were created during the time-frame of our class (prehistory to the Middle Ages).
Your presentation must contain representatives from at least 3 different forms of media: visual art, architecture, literature, poetry, music, dance and/or cinema.
4. Research Artwork
Research your artworks. Resources– including websites where you found images, text, or videos– must be cited in MLA format and listed on the final slide of your presentation.
5. Design Presentation
Design your presentation using PowerPoint (basic templates can be found here: 1997-2003 version of PowerPoint download , 2003-present version of PowerPoint download ). These templates are meant as a starting point. Your presentation should creatively experiment with font, color, background and layout, but be sure to include the following:
Introduce your theme in 200-250 words. Emphasizing social and historical context, explain what makes the theme significant within the humanities.
Present each artwork on a separate slide, and provide the artist’s name, title, and date of the artwork.
For works of literature, poetry, music, dance or cinema, you will need to create a hyperlink to take the viewer to a literary excerpt, music clip, or video.
Write a 100-150 word analysis for each artwork.
In one or two sentences describe the work. What does it look or sound like? What is the subject and what formal aspects are emphasized?
For the majority of the analysis, consider the work’s historical context and how it represents your theme. How does this artwork reflect the time period in which it was created? Use your knowledge of history and what you have learned about this artwork.
Remember to cite your resources on the final slide of the presentation.
