Verbal sticks and rhetorical stones: Improving conference presentations in political science

Abstract

We provide advice to presenters at political science conferences. Our advice is based on the idea that the goal of a professional presentation is to provide an audience with information it can understand, discuss, and remember. We argue that current presentational norms in our discipline are counterproductive, and we encourage presenters to make their presentations more constrained, less technical, and more connected to the political world outside of political science. © 2011 American Political Science Association.