Having put the finishing touches on the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my Honors Thesis, I’ll now need to focus my efforts on next week’s presentation before the History Department. In particular, I’ll be working on synthesizing my findings into a concise and effective presentation format. Discussing the Introduction, which sketches out the trajectory of the entire thesis and its central arguments, will be crucial to showing Department members the intended path of this thesis project. Accordingly, I’ll likely weight the presentation towards the material in the Introduction, with a smaller but still substantive portion devoted to the Chapter 1 and the historiographical evolution of commissioners.

I’ll also be searching for relevant images that can help enliven the presentation and maintain the interest of my audience. The contemporary cartoons I wrote about in another post will almost certainly find their way into my powerpoint presentation, while  images of individuals who are featured in the Introduction and Chapter 1, such as the law’s principal author, Virginia senator James Mason, and commissioners Levi Davis and George W. Meeker, could also make useful additions.