ORAL PRESENTATIONS: POETRY, DRAMA, AND NARRATIVE NONFICTION
“Create and deliver professional oral presentations.”
A major focus of Emerson College’s educational approach is public speaking. While other colleges may offer a public speaking or oral communication course as an elective or optional class, Emerson requires all students to take a course on Fundamentals of Speech Communication. In my eyes, this makes perfect sense. A constant of the workplace is the presentation - whether its a professional slide deck to a boardroom or an elevator pitch to a coworker. After all, what good is a good idea if you can’t articulate it well? As such, being able to deliver quality and professional oral presentations is highly valued both by myself and at Emerson College, and nowhere is that value exemplified than in Oral Presentation of Literature.
Oral Presentation of Literature is a unique class on offer at Emerson. It combines public speaking, literature, and performance into a single curriculum, helping students improve their media analysis, confidence, and overall public speaking ability. Throughout the course’s three-month span, students write, analyze, and perform multiple pieces across a variety of genres including narrative nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic monologues. This curriculum encourages students to engage with their audience , study the ins and outs of public speaking, and overall become an effective presenter of anything and everything.
I’ve included a few different selections of work here. Above is an analysis of multiple poems that were then presented to the class, chosen for an interwoven theme. To the left is an analysis of my final for the class: a dramatic reading from famed realist poet Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.