I found writing my halfa kucha argument difficult because of the medium’s streamlined nature. I ended up cutting 3/4 of what I had written down initially on my brainstorming document. Although I thought the oral component of my presentation was solid, I think it was slightly muddled by the fact that I was trying to deliver an argument that might have necessitated several more pages of substance to be fully fleshed out. Perhaps I should have opted to form a more concise argument or restructured the one I had already conceived of.
I feel the visual aspect of my presentation was strong. I carefully constructed each of my slides using scans of panels and images from Fun Home and Sabrina. I then assembled them into collages that represented the central themes of my argument. I typically become obsessive over art projects such as this one. I take pride in constructing visually appealing slide shows. My final product for this project was intentionally simplistic, though if I had started creating the slides earlier, I am fully convinced I would have tricked myself into creating a slideshow that rivals installations at MoMA.
The playlist that I created focuses on songs that I listened to when I was younger. I decided to pick this genre of music as well as this time frame because it reminds me of a simpler time when the music that I listened to was a true source of fun and entertainment. This presented the issue for me of finding songs that I not only enjoyed as a child but still would like to listen to now. I think that it is hard to gage how a person’s music taste may change as they grow up but there is a strong power that is given to songs that establish feelings of nostalgia. Once there is an outlet for reminiscing, it is clear that a person can gain a certain level of creativity and happiness from this place. Overall, I found this assignment to be very fun and enjoyable.
It’s been a while since I left Beijing – a city where I spent my childhood and the most golden of autumns in Chaoyang. However, I’m intimately connected to the city when meeting its people, viewing it in media, or just recollecting my own memories. Therefore, I would like to display my impression of “Peking” (not the real Beijing city at this moment, but the “elsewhere” I once know of.)
First Coronation – My Kindergarten always plan trips to walk around the Forbidden City, a place people used to say to call “a wonder”; I used to believe they were dramatizing because it looked like “just a usual bigger house”. Yet now I know it really was a wonder, not only because it’s “bigger”, but due to what it symbolizes for this nation over hundreds of years of imperial power’s reign up to this point.
Er Huang + Peony Pavilion – One Peking Opera and one of the genre’s best modern abstractions.
4,5,6, – No comment.
Some of the city’s rock stars in the 80’s and 90’s are the best, many of whose works were performed in Tian’anmen Square, invoking great popularity.
The best adagio in the history of humankind expresses my wish for it to remain peaceful and preserve its colors in this chaotic time.
As a person who prefers to talk and present verbally to people than in writing, I expected this assignment to be much easier to talk about the analysis I made. Selecting the books wasn’t a big deal when preparing for the presentation. The general structure of choosing the pages to analyze, create a plan, and write the essay/script was the same. However, the difference was the details. The issue that I had was choosing a limited number of scenes from each book. While some people might say that the presentation was easier for them because the outline and the script were a maximum of 2 pages long, it wasn’t for me. This was because I wanted to spend more time on the pages that I selected and provide a detailed analysis of the use of symbolism, the intention of the author, and the stylistic devices used. If the assignment had given me more time for each scene and a longer presentation time, I would have been able to talk more about it. As there was a time limit for each slide, I had to make my analysis as precise and concise as possible. This challenged me to choose the most exciting scenes from Stitches and Kindred and make the presentation convincing.
When deciding what kind of trauma I would like to focus on, I decided to look at the trauma between an individual and society. I chose Stitches and Kindred because I thought that the two would be the perfect example of representing an individual’s and society’s trauma. Here the individual was David, and the society was the African American community, which Dana represented.
When creating the presentation, I used a minimalist approach. Instead of having lengthy words on the slides, I just had the scenes on the slide on a black background. I used such an approach in order for the audience to listen to my voice instead of reading the text on the PowerPoint. I also used the black background to create a dark atmosphere, reminding the audience of trauma. The last slide was an image of a person walking out of the cave and towards the light. This slide was intended to show how David and Dana went through healing from their trauma and overcame it.
When giving this type of presentation, I’ve learned the importance and significance of being concise and precise at the same time. The limited amount of time per slide pushed me to select the essential parts of the comics and analyze them. After giving my presentation and watching my peers, I felt that I could have focused on a single scene through 2 slides by talking about the symbolism in the first slide and the stylistic device on the second slide.
I chose to compare Stitches and Gender Queer inspired by Judith Hermann’s dialectic on trauma: there are both the will to proclaim and the will to not do so, and only the former will leads to recovery. I searched the comics read in the semester and spotted that these two works are distinct in artistic cues yet similar in the lens of Judith’s theory. Then, I parsed the contradiction in David’s situation and contrasted it with the quicker recovery of Maya, along with a detailed visual analysis accompanying theoretical framing.
I drew visual symbols for my arguments on visual analysis, which to me represents the spirit of this class – “draw to win”. I believed the main characteristics and shining aspects of images could be abstracted into symbols that are still recognizable, so I drew white blocks in the black ground to signify “blocks of time”. Employing visual devices for visual argument is fun, and that only happens when the medium of the rhetorical act is presentation, not writing. Hence, writing is different from multi-medium, live presentation in terms of the means of argument; I would definitely use more meticulous phrases – rather than images – to convey my point if I were to write an essay.
On great potential improvement is to present in a more natural language, then recite the script. In this project, I wrote the script before everything as if it’s an academic essay, then I found I couldn’t recite it. However, almost everybody on the first day presented naturally without reading the script, which would be more attractive than mine. In addition, Ali’s presentation related comics to our daily experience (of support systems), which invoked our relation to comic figures, rather than analyzing and observing them as objects – a great point I could pick up in future presentations.
Making my presentation was an easy task. However, I think I did not really consider the time limit, as I thought that if I spoke faster than usual it would be okay. When presenting, I had a hard time expressing my thoughts in 20 seconds for each slide since I tend to forget my thoughts often, so I speak slow. Besides this, I enjoyed the fast pace of the Halfa Kucha.
I decided to structure my presentation based on Judith Hermans categories that I took from the quotes in the directions page. I think that it really helped bring a storyline to the trauma in Sabrina and Kindred. Looking back on others presentations, I think that I could work on presenting in a more informative way. I think that I didn’t really get my argument in the way I intended to.
After days of thinking about a scene to recreate, I finally gave up and decided to recreate a scene that of a movie that I despise, Lawrence of Arabia, since it is what makes more sense to recreate. While I did not have everything to master the recreation, I did my best to imitate him, of which using a cake slicer instead of the traditional Khanjar Arabs were using to protect themselves.
Given my lack of exposure to such presentations, it was hard for me to fully explain my ideas in the presentation. When it comes to what was different compared to writing an essay, I would say the limitation when it comes to time and facing the audience makes presenting a bit more harder. My process was obviously different since I have to adjust to the time and the style of the presentation, which is not the case with essays.
Being more detailed is what I got from others’ presentations. I did not think I would have been able to fully expand my argument within my timeframe, so I limited myself to what I mentioned. I believe that I learned a lot from the process, so while the presentation did not reflect my understanding of the material, I am still grateful for the way in which I learned from my peers.
In my presentation, I focused on analyzing the visual aspect of the comics and explored how visual plays an important role in representing trauma and healing in Fun Home and Sabrina. My thought process for landing on this topic was that firstly, I assumed that most of my classmates would focus on analyzing the plot so I wanted to offer a new perspective in our discussion. Also, as an art history major, I’m always interested in visual analysis so I could treat this assignment as a way to not only practice my visual analysis skill but also learn to connect my observations back to the topic of trauma and healing.
The greatest challenge I had while working on this project was making the presentation more informative and engaging. Therefore, I spent most of the time thinking about how to frame my argument in a way that it could be presented clearly within the various constraints of the format. What I’ve done include: editing my script so that it only had about 3 sentences per slide; selecting images that not only clearly explain my argument but also expand on it; and memorizing the script as I always know that public speaking is my weak spot.
My biggest takeaway from this assignment is the importance of storytelling. I noticed that the presentations that kept me focused all had a really good, slow beginning. The presenters not only responded to the question but also tried to engage the audience to go through their thought processes. The ending is also important, for example, I really like how Ben ended his presentation with a panel of Sabrina which inspired the audience to ponder upon the question he addressed at the end while making the whole presentation sound like a great story. In addition, I think I will try to use the same workflow while making my future presentations: assigning a limited period of time for each slide and correspondingly slimming down the language, as I found it to be a good way to stay focused on the most important points.
When creating this presentation, it was incredibly difficult to find panels and information in general that was worthy of fitting into this short time frame. When gathering the pictures of panels, I tried to look for scenes that were accurate examples of the ways in which the main character’s support systems were actively influencing their actions and emotions. This demonstrates the differences in constructing the presentation versus an essay because in an essay it takes time to write out an argument and form your own thoughts. Whereas, in this presentation, we had to base the majority of our argument on scenes as well as direct examples from the books. When structuring my argument I decided to focus on the influence that a support system and family can have on trauma and the process of healing. It is difficult to pin point every character that played a role in the recovery process but by highlighting the ways in which the main characters were influenced by the people around them, it is clear that outsiders play a big role in the healing process. I decided to organize my presentation with every other slide because I introduced an idea that applied to both stories and then I discussed the ways in which the ideas were different between the two books. I think that I would use this method in my written work because it ensures that both stories are discussed equally and all ideas are explored thoroughly.
When giving this type of presentation I learned the importance of being concise and specific when discussing main ideas. It is very easy to get sidetracked or stutter because of nerves, but in this presentation there is no time that can be allotted to this. I found it very difficult to accurately present what I had prepared because I became nervous when I had to stand in front of the class as well as knowing I had a time limit. I tried to focus a little less on the actual visuals themselves and more on the ideas that they represented. I think that this was a little different than what my classmates did and I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I think in the future I would draw on the way my classmates had both books on one slide versus every other slide. I think that this was an interesting way to construct the information given as the viewer can actively look from side to side to see the two ideas play out in each visual. I can’t say that I enjoyed this mode of presentation more than the classic style of presentation, but I do think that I learned a lot about being precise and to the point with what I wish to present. Overall, I think that there are some things that I would change if I were to do a Half Kucha again in the future but I am happy with what I presented.
