Texts & Docs for TDs

Look here for some suggestions about rhetorical analysis of speeches. [Updated February 12, 2014]

Students should definitely check back to this page from time to time as I plan to adopt a new approach to the TDs in the near future.

Week One
(Feb 7 or Feb 14, depending on group.)
Students should download both of these documents for the first week of TD meetings; they are .pdf (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) documents, and may take several seconds to open on your computer screen.)

• A passage from George Bancroft's History of the United States (first published in the 1830s) about the Boston Tea Party
Students will be expected to know something about the so-called "Boston Tea Party", such as what motivated the colonists to take the action they did; the discussion will focus on how Bancroft tries to orient his reader and how his own perspective is apparent in the text.
• A passage from Michael McDonnell's introduction to Remembering the Revolution
Students should give thought to differences of point of view between Bancroft and McDonnell, and how the differences influence rhetorical choices.
• The Declaration of Independence
Students will recall that we looked briefly at this iconic document last year in semester 4, and will be expected to know something about the background, including date, place and author(s), in order to identify influences on the text, and to have given some thought to how it both calls upon war as an argument for independence and avoids calling upon war as a strategy.here. The Wikipedia page may prove interesting: look here]
• An engraving of the Boston Tea Party
• A photo of a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party
Students should consider the rhetorical force of these two images, i.e., what messages do they convey, and what techniques do they use to do so.

Week Two
(Feb 21 or Feb 28, depending on group.)
Students should download both of these documents for the first week of TD meetings; they are .pdf (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) documents, and may take several seconds to open on your computer screen.)

War is not “virtual,” with icons moving on a screen or through cyberspace with blood that is nothing more than a splash of color. It is not a chess game, with canny hands moving inanimate pieces on a playing board and discarding the pieces only to set them back up for the next contest. War is a cruel, wasteful, and terrifying engagement between opposing forces that often must kill, or be killed. The Civil War was the single most destructive war in the history of this nation. In fact, it equals all other wars combined.

Stout, Harry S. "Religion in the Civil War: The Southern Perspective." Divining America, TeacherServe®. National Humanities Center. Accessed February 8, 2014. <http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwsouth.htm>

• At the beginning of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a number of works about American history; this passage is about the battle at the Alamo in 1836.
• Two passages (in one document) from Jefferson Davis's book on the Civil War, The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy. Students should reflect on why he chooses to make the assertions that he does.
• Ulysses S Grant wrote his memoirs at the end of his life; this passage comes from the Introduction
• An illustration of Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
• An excerpt from Ulysses S Grant's Conclusion

Week Three
(March 14 or March 21, depending on group.)
Students should download both of these documents for the first week of TD meetings; they are .pdf (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) documents, and may take several seconds to open on your computer screen.)

These articles were already in pdf format on the New York Times web-site, where each article is laid out on a single A4 page - the type is correspondingly small...
• The report in the New York Times of the battle of the Little Big Horn in July 1876.
• The New York Times article that reported the death of Sitting Bull, who had been one of the active leaders of the Indians at the Little Big Horn.
• An excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt's account of moving his "Rough Riders" to Florida, in preparation for the invasion of Cuba in 1898.

Week Four
(March 28 or April 4, depending on group.)
Students should download both of these documents for the first week of TD meetings; they are .pdf (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) documents, and may take several seconds to open on your computer screen.)

• A transcription of part of an interview in the 1930s with a man who had been drafted and sent to France in World War I
• An excerpt of reports from the New York Times about the battle at Château Thierry
• A letter from a US soldier in France on November 11, 1918
• A poster by a French artist representing an American soldier and two French children
• A parody of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"

Week Five
(April 9 or April 18, depending on group.)
Students should download both of these documents for the first week of TD meetings; they are .pdf (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) documents, and may take several seconds to open on your computer screen.)

• A transcript of a TV report on the Vietnam war by a leading television journalist.
• Excerpts from an editorial in Armed Forces Journal 1971
• Excerpts from an article composed of brief comments and recollections by people involved in the war in Vietnam
• A reminiscence of a soldier's experience in Viet Nam
• The words to a song by Bob Dylan: "With God on Our Side"