As you begin thinking about your essays you'll want to quickly select a rhetorical artifact for contextual analysis. I strongly encourage you to read over the directions again, but I've excerpted a small section here: "Identify a rhetorical artifact (or a closely aligned set of artifacts) that is interesting or complex. This may be a speech, essay, ad campaign, website, building, art installation, memorial—you name it." (Note that you should not just re-analyze the same ad you're using in the speech. If you broaden it out to an entire ad campaign, that would be acceptable--so there'd be some conceptual overlap--but it might be fun to pick something entirely new.)
Speeches make great fodder for rhetorical analysis, so I'm linking to a couple of really good sources for speech texts, audio, or video.
American Rhetoric - Definitive source for the most significant American speeches. Start with the links at left, or search for something specific.
Famous Speeches - History Channel's speech archive includes presidential, war, civil rights, sports, and space exploration speeches.
Gifts of Speech - Women's speeches from around the world.
If you do elect to analyze a speech, I recommend avoiding speeches from movies. The artificial nature of the rhetorical situation as constructed within the film will hinder the scope of your analysis.
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