Description
Since his death in 1919, Theodore Roosevelt has been recalled as a rugged cowboy-hero, a progressive "trust-buster," and his image has even been preserved in the form of the "Teddy Bear." Advertisers, motion picture studios, and sports teams have used Roosevelt's likeness to sell coffee, to boost TV ratings, and to publicise sporting events. While much has been written on Roosevelt's life, and particularly his tenure as president, his posthumous image and legacy has been almost entirely overlooked. Yet, because Roosevelt has so regularly been invoked, the study of his legacy is critical to understanding the motives of successive generations of commemorators that have summoned him. Focusing on a myriad of cultural representations of Roosevelt in historiography, media, politics, and public memorials, this project aims to analyse the communities and individuals who constructed his legacy. The commemorative communities funded and organised sizeable networks that disseminated a wide variety of portrayals. By examining these representations this study will provide a comprehensive view of Roosevelt's legacy. This scholarship has implications for the broader study of presidential history and memory studies. What impact do monuments, media, historiography, and political invocations have on our memory of the past? This project answers this question by using Theodore Roosevelt's legacy to understand the people, organisations, and historical contexts that shaped his public memory over time. This project builds on my PhD, but takes it in new and significantly expanded directions. Whereas my PhD focused on U.S. foreign policy during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, this project is driven by new questions about Roosevelt's posthumous legacy and the historical contexts after 1919. I have produced high quality publications on Roosevelt's presidential legacy since 2008 and conceived this project in consultation with historians, library curators, park curators, and even the main Roosevelt memorial association. The project's research questions require an engagement with disciplines beyond history and diverse sources, to understand the cultural setting that produced the many portrayals of Roosevelt. Representations of Roosevelt in movies, TV, popular advertising, visual culture, and public art will be used alongside traditional archival material, political proclamations, and historiographical literature to produce a comprehensive view of his legacy. A wide group of academic and non-academic audiences will benefit from this research, which offers an intellectually innovative approach to presidential history by incorporating memory studies. The output of a monograph will make a major contribution to U.S. history and component disciplines in American studies. Collaborative ventures with the TR Center at Dickinson State University, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and the U.S. National Parks Service will help make knowledge exchange and stakeholder engagement an intrinsic part of this project. These objectives will be accomplished with engagement activities designed to enable the research to extend to wider public audiences and impact contemporary perceptions of Theodore Roosevelt. Simultaneously these collaborations will provide innovations in research communications.| Period | 2014 → 2015 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Arts and Humanities Research Council, United Kingdom |