Revisiting Three Iconic American Speeches: The Words of FDR, JFK, and MLK
Overview
August 29, 2022, 4:00 pmEncore Presentation
(Includes Live Professor Q & A!)
The 3 Greatest American Speeches of the 20th Century
We live in a time of competing soundbites, media highlights, and โfake newsโ claims that urge us to examine more carefully what we believe is true about the US political landscape.ย Sometimes, we react to the current tumult by assuming that this discord is a new situation and that things were simpler and more direct back in the so-called โgood old days.โ
Three Stirring American Speeches
In this class, we will explore this impulse byย revisiting three stirring 20th-century American speeches: by Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.ย ย We will examine moments that we allย thinkย we know well because they constitute the foundation of our popular sense of America โ as a nation and a people. But as we dig deeper beyond the surface of simple soundbites and into the lesser-known context and controversies surrounding these iconic historical moments, we may be surprised to find that our understanding of the past and present may not be as clear as we have assumed, after all.