Individual Presentations

Your individual presentation assignment is deliver a five-minute presentation based on research into a specific aspect of the period background to the literature we are studying. Your final cause is the improvement of our understanding and the increase in our appreciation of the conditions surrounding the literature of the First World War. After the presentation you will hand in your research notes to the instructor for consideration in the grading of the assignment.

Update: please feel free to use any types of aid, media or format that you prefer. The only criterion in this regard is effectiveness.
Update 2: again, the specific format of your presentation is for you to decide. If I might offer a recommendation, one effective method would be to use the last minute of your presentation to state your opinion on the connection of your chosen topic to the literature of our period.
Update 3: the five minute time limit will be strictly enforced - from both sides. This is a discipline that will prove effective in many future practical applications.
Update 4: another recommendation is that you use the opportunity to develop your oral presentation skills. Design and incorporate techniques which give your presentation its greatest effectiveness. As always, of course, I am available for consultation ...

The choice of topic is entirely up to you: your only criterion in addition to that of relevancy as stated above is that you find it intriguing. Select your topic from any one of three areas:

1. Pre-War: the Edwardian age.
2. The War: 1914-1918
3. The aftermath: 1919-1945

Some illustrative examples of specific topics, all with direct relevancy to the period literature, within these three areas are as follow:

Pre-War: country life; the Decadents; individual Edwardian authors; Winston Churchill in the Boer War; the Aesthetes; French absinthism; the English Music Hall age; Edwardian scandal; Darwinism and the myth of Progress; the "Little Englander" controversy; Jeeves and Bertie Wooster; London in the 1910s; fin de siecle; bluestockings and the New Woman; King Edward VII.

The War: life in the trenches; war poetry; women and the War; casualty rates; masculinity in the Great War; the conscription issue; the Somme; Lawrence of Arabia; War paintings; politics and Prime Ministers; war propaganda and censorship; Gas warfare; the causes of the War; shell-shock; the aristocracy in the war; the Christmas truce; war experiences of specific authors; war invalids; the Red Baron and the Sopwith Camel.

The Aftermath: post-war lives of individual authors; the Versailles treaty; Georgian poets; Adolf Schicklgruber - wounded German army corporal, gas victim and impecunious painter; literary modernism; depression in Britain; the Balfour Declaration - British Empire and the Palestine Question; Winston Churchill, the wilderness years; anti-semitism in Britain; decline of Empire; King George V.