CCC Presentations

The Contemporary Countercultural Presentations are a four part project. The whole project consists the following parts:

1) A Factual Paper. This is a 500-800 word report about your topic. This paper does not have to contain any opinions, but is simply a write up introducing your topic and highlighting the research that you have done on it.

2) An Interview. This will be a 10+ question interview with someone committed in some way to your topic. For example, if you are doing meditation, then you will want to interview a committed meditator. If you are doing a report on Food Not Bombs, you will want to interview someone who is involved in this organization. These interviews can be conducted in person or over email/phone. The school does have a voice recorder that will help you record phone conversations, however, if you want to use this machine, you will need to set up a time to use it in advance of the due date.

3) An Analytical Paper. This is a 500-800 word analytical paper on your research topic. This paper should have a thesis and contain quotes and examples to back up your points as in other analytical papers. This is a short paper, so be specific with what you want to say. Also, do not simply say that something is good or bad. You need to have real analysis going on in your paper. When grading it, I will mostly be interested in how much thought you have put into your paper and the level of insight into your topic that you have aquired.

4) A Presentation. The presentation is the culminating project. Each student will be responsible for presenting to the class an 8-10 minute presentation on exam day. This is where you get to present to the class both information on your topic as well as your analysis. Since this will be your 4th presentation of the year, I am looking for you all to step it up and make your presentations both engaging and informative. I will also be looking for you to answer a core question within your presentation, and not to simply construct your presentation around a series of unrelated facts.

Key Questions: Throughout the whole project there are a few important key questions that are important to answer: 1) Is my topic actually part of the counterculture? In other words, is this activity or group of people actually doing anything that resists on some level the mainstream, corporate-dominated consumer culture? 2) Is this an answer? In other words, does this topic—meditation, art, alternative lifeways, hiking the Appalachian Trail, etc.—actually provide people with a sense of fulfilment that the mainstream, consumer lifestyle is lacking?