The elevator pitch that really stood out to me was Alexandra’s. She volunteered to present first and her confidence and preparation was made extremely clear with her delivery. She had her pitch close to memorized and clearly knew a lot about her artifact, Martin Luther King’s Letters from Birmingham Jail.

Alexandra started out strong, commanding her audience’s attention with her eye contact and engaging hook. She clearly identified the exigence of her artifact and the context behind Martin Luther King ending up in jail, as well as King’s emergence as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Her argument somewhat clearly identified her thesis of these letters’ importance to the Civil Rights Movement and American history itself, however there were a few key pieces her elevator pitch was missing.

First, while Alexandra did an excellent job reflecting on the rhetorical situation of her artifact, she selected rhetorical situation as her lens instead of including factors like ethos, logos, and pathos, or commonplaces. In our conversation with the class, we were sure to point this out and emphasize the importance of analyzing our artifacts through a lens other than just rhetorical situation because that is what everyone will be doing.

Additionally, since her pitch did not look through a deeper lens than just rhetorical situation, her elevator pitch served as more of a summary of her artifact than actually critically analyzing it. Obviously, being one or two minutes, the elevator pitch cannot go on and on about every little detail- there is time for that in the actual pitch. However, I would have liked for there to be a little bit more than what her artifact is and that it helped fight injustice. How? What did it specifically say that resonated with people? I am glad she included a quote from the Letters themselves, quoting “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, but she simply states that this was written and says nothing else about this. Why should we care? What does this mean to him? To you? To the audience it was written for?

Though there are small improvements to make, it is clear Alexandra has passion for and knowledge of this topic and I am looking forward to hearing her speech.