Presidential Inaugural Addresses

The following material is optional background reading. Read as you wish to help you prepare for the lecture.

Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, 1801

Benjamin Harrison's Inaugural Address, 1889

The Times | The speech

Woodrow Wilson's First Inaugural Address, 1913

The Times | The speech

Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, 1933

Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address, 1801

The Times | The speech

Now, for Thursday, April 8, let's discuss Barack Obama's moment.

Barack Obama's Inaugural Address, 2009

Text Video

Write a journal entry in which you consider some of the following questions:

Is Obama's speech fundamentally acceptance or rejection?
How does Obama work the dialectic of permanence and change?
What role does Obama assign to <freedom> in his speech?
Is the <frontier> dead? Does it still shape Obama's view of American history?
With what language does Obama conceptualize the relationship between the individual and community? What kind of a force is individualism?
What role does Obama assign to government? Is it like one of those other presidents we studied? How does Obama do permanence and change with this view of government?
How does Obama structure the dramatistic process?

We will talk about this in class.