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So you are presenting a research paper...
Congratuations! This is a huge accomplishment and recognition of all of your hard work and research. But now you have to cut down your months (if not years) of research into a short presentation. How do you go about that without cutting important material?
Understanding your paper
Understanding your paper
Firstly, read through your original research paper from beginning to end with no edits. Whether you finished your paper a year ago or last night in an energy drink-fueled manic state, a clean read-through of your paper will give you a baseline understanding for what material you are working with.
Once you have an understanding for your paper, find a quiet place and read it aloud from beginning to end. Ignore any of the footnotes, in-text citations, etc. that may be present in your paper--there are plenty of things that are standard to include in a written paper that are excluded in a spoken presentation.
Use the stopwatch provided to time yourself. Do not worry about the length right now, you just need to know how long your original paper is.
Alternatively, you can have an online text-to-speech read your paper aloud to you. If you do this, make sure to keep a stopwatch open to see how long it takes text-to-speech to read your paper. TTSReader (https://ttsreader.com) is a great tool to start with.
Understanding the parameters of your presentation
Understanding the parameters of your presentation
Now that you have a (rough) baseline for how long your paper is when presented aloud, refer back to the parameters for your presentation given by the conference or symposia committee. Are you already close to the time you need? It is okay if you are not, this module will help you adapt your paper.
Sample: Dining Frescoes in the House of the Triclinium, Pompeii, Italy
Sample: Dining Frescoes in the House of the Triclinium, Pompeii, Italy
Throughout this module there will be an example paper edit using a paper entitled "Spatial, temporal, and cultural contextualization: An analysis of wall paintings from room R of the House of the Triclinium". This is a ten-page, double-spaced paper that will be cut down to a twelve-minute presentation (five or six pages) in an attempt to provide a smaller example. Feel free to use this as an example before completing the module yourself, or as a reference example.
Paper abstract: "This paper examines the wall paintings from room R, the triclinium, in the House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) at Pompeii, focusing on how their meaning changes when viewed in spatial, temporal, and cultural context. Although scholars generally agree that the three frescoes depict banquet scenes, they disagree about whether the paintings represent separate events, successive moments in one banquet, or loosely related scenes. Through close visual analysis, the paper argues that the east, north, and west wall paintings are best understood as distinct but thematically connected depictions of dining, entertainment, and excess rather than as a single continuous narrative. It also considers the room’s layout, later renovations, and the viewer's likely movement through the space to suggest how ancient visitors would have encountered the images. By comparing the frescoes with Roman dining practices and literary evidence, especially Petronius' 'Satyricon', the paper proposes that the scenes may have functioned as a highly local and humorous reflection on elite performance, social status, and self-presentation. Ultimately, the frescoes seem to portray not idealized banquets but exaggerated, personal, and possibly ironic scenes that would have resonated differently with ancient viewers than with modern scholars."
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