The H-SAWH network focuses on the history of women and gender in the U.S. South.
It is sponsored by the Southern Association for Women Historians and co-sponsored by H-Net, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Read your paper aloud several times to catch (and change) awkward wordings. Time yourself to one minute less than the allotted time and edit as needed. Once you have it in final form, print it triple spaced in a large (size 14 or larger) font, bolded. Number your pages. Do not staple them. Put the pages in a folder, paperclipped. Remove the clip before presenting.
Send your paper to your discussant by the deadline set by the conference. If organizers have not set one, email the discussant and ask her/him. Most people would like it a few weeks in advance. That -- and not the conference -- is your deadline. Send *exactly* the version that you will be sharing with the audience. Asking another scholar to read two or three times the material you can share in the time allotted to you and to guess what to address in her/his comments is disrespectful.
Rose Stremlau
Davidson College
Practice your presentation. Read it out loud (even if it is just to yourself). You'll catch a lot of mistakes that way, and it will help with your nervousness. Also, the more familiar you are with your presentation, the easier it will be to maintain a degree of eye contact with the audience.
Your network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.
Mentoring Discussion Series, Question 5:
What have you learned about giving conference presentations over the course of your carrer? What advice would you give to someone giving her first conference presentation?
