The realities of life (that is, getting travel funding) have necessitated, for the first time in my life, that I prepare a poster presentation. Alas. Here is an excerpt from instructions from the official instructions on how to create a poster presentation:
Divide the contents of your poster into whichever of the following are appropriate: title, author and affiliation, abstract, methodology, data, results, conclusion. For some areas, such as political theory, these categories will not fit very well; perhaps the best way to proceed in these cases is to think of your presentation as a set of overheads to outline your argument, attract visitors to your poster, and stimulate conversations with them about your paper.Okay so the stuff about facilitating a conversation makes some sense. Except: what person will be crazy enough to walk around to have conversations about poster boards?
3 comments:
I did last year--have a conversation about poster boards, that is. With a forlorn-looking political theory grad student who was dutifully manning his neglected exhibit on Voegelin and Gadamer, which consisted of his entire paper taped to a posterboard adorned with photos of the above-mentioned thinkers. It's true that this may not be the most fruitful medium for conveying political theory arguments. But! In its infinite wisdom, my department has decided to encourage all grad students to be prepared for these career-defining moments by hosting a department-wide "poster fair" this fall. I am considering presenting a poster on which fertilizer makes bean plants grow faster, a "draft" version of which I think may still be in my parents' attic from the seventh grade.
I'm trying to picture how you can possibly tape your entire paper to a posterboard! Presumably it's stapled together and then taped up there?!
Thank you for sharing! This is all awesome. I can't believe your department is doing this to you! I'm really hoping that I have no need to get good at developing posters in the future...
Yes, it was stapled and taped. And people complain about reading things on computer screens--have they ever tried reading manuscripts off of posterboards?
I'm pretty sure that, if political theory has a future, it's not in posters. I have to admit though, I'm a little relieved that, in its effort to think of ways to professionalize us, my department settled on this incredibly quaint and frankly retro solution rather than forcing us to do something relating to the phrase "social media technology."
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