Political Speechwriting

Catalog description

Taught by the former Director of Speechwriting for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, this class covers the theory and practice of political speechwriting. We will look at the evolution of major political speeches throughout history and engage in seminar-style discussions to analyze these orations. We will seek to understand what makes a speech succeed or fail, and cover theories of rhetoric--from Aristotle to Monroe's Motivated Sequence--that help explain a speech's persuasive power (or lack thereof). The class will culminate with students getting a chance to try their own hand at writing political speeches.