(LITTLE TO NO TEXT ON SLIDES) (TEXT ONLY ON THE SPEAKER NOTES WHICH WILL BE USED AS A SCRIPT WHEN PRESENTING) Cities comprise the great meeting places of civilizations and world cultures. While we might equate the most famous metropolises with their broader empire or nation – Rome with the Roman Empire, Athens with the Greek Empire, modern day New York with the United States – what truly makes cities such dynamic centers are the continuous interactions and connections of diverse peoples. Traders and travelers, religious missionaries and political officials, students and soldiers all connected in cities where they exchanged commodities, ideas, and beliefs while also projecting authority and power.
In your “Cities as Places of Encounter” slide presentation, you will examine one (1) of four case studies: Babylon, Athens, Xian, or Carthage (see your list of assigned cities here). PLEASE NOTE THE WORK WILL BE DONE AS INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS – ALL WORK SHOULD BE DONE AS INDIVIDUALS. This is NOT a group project. Based on assigned readings from the Places of Encounter textbook, you will put together a presentation on Google Slides or PowerPoint, including embedded audio with your verbal explanations, that addresses the following:
(a.) Read all required readings, including “your city and the world” section, the “global encounters and connection” section, and the “encounters as told by primary sources.”
(b.) Explain how and why particular cities became important at specific time periods, based on your assigned readings.
(c.) Discuss the global connections that made those cities such vibrant hubs of encounter; how was your city a hub of interactions that across borders and cultures?
(d.) Analyze how the first-hand accounts written in primary sources enhance your understanding of cities as places of encounters.
(e.) Your slide presentation should have 9-12 slides total.
(f.) Please follow these presentation formatting rules and guidelines
(g.) You must “present” your slides virtually by adding audio explanations to each slide. You should explain your slides in a coherent presentation style verbally through the audio you add to the presentation. Watch this video on adding or recording audio to powerpoint, or this video on how to add audio to Google Slides.
(h.) All slide presentations will be made available to other students by Dr. Gedacht, and you will provide a response with feedback to these two other students on our “Cities as Place of Encounter” discussion board to two other students by the end of Wednesday, March 27th.
As you are putting together your presentation, please keep the following things in mind:
1.) Presentations are a visual medium: pay attention to making it visually appealing with images, gifs, and well-organized text. Your images should be as historically relevant as possible.
2.) You should try to keep actual text to a minimum using only a few bullet points. Do not write long sentences or paragraphs with the partial exception of excerpts of key quotations from your primary sources.
3.) You CAN and MUST include quotations from primary sources you found particularly reflective of how cities act as places of encounter and connection. These quotes can be a bit longer than other pieces of text, but these excerpts from your primary sources should still be no longer than 2-3 sentences and should not overwhelm your slide – then explain them in your own words in your audio (do not simply read the quotation from your primary source).
4.) You should summarize each slide in your own words by recording and/or adding audio into your powerpoint or Google slides; when recording, you can have note cards if you wish, but the speaking style should be conversational rather than reading a paper.
5.) Remember: you also should not be reading from sentences or paragraphs on your slides; you should be explaining the small number of words and images to communicate your thesis, the books you read for your historiography, and two of the sub-topics from your paper.
The majority of the text should be in the format of speaker notes that I will use to record and add to the slides to go along with the presentation which is a huge part of the assignment. A huge part of the assignment once again is the script which I will read from while presenting there shouldnt be a lot of text on the actual slides but rather on a script to read off from whilepresenting.
mla citated bibliography on last slide
