Memorial Communities and Presidential Legacy: Remembering Theodore Roosevelt

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.

The project is carefully designed to ensure that the wider public will benefit from this research and that outputs link directly to the project's most immediate stakeholders. The project approaches impact through four strategic pathways: 1) digital media outreach; 2) targeted engagement at U.S. National Park sites; 3) educational work; 4) media engagement.

The project will engage stakeholders with a targeted digital media outreach plan utilizing partner websites, namely the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the U.S. National Parks Service, and the TR Center at Dickinson State University. Second, the project seeks to build on existing relationships with four U.S. National Park sites by co-developing pamphlets (in paper and digital form) suited to the special interests of each site. These pamphlets will be used by park rangers in tours or information sessions and posted on NPS websites. The third strand, and a secondary impact of the pamphlets, is to engage students through National Park rangers outreach activities. The education pathway is further realised by supplying lesson plans to the Theodore Roosevelt Association which conducts educational outreach. Finally, the project will communicate its findings through engagement with national and international media. These pathways offer unique opportunities for reaching non-academic audiences while raising my profile as a leader in this field of study. The strategy builds on past experiences while finding innovative ways of disseminating and relating my work.

The pathways to impact rely on collaborative partnerships with communities of commemoration and I have cultivated relationships with key leaders in these communities. The TRA is the largest presidential memorial association; it has a national reach. I am a member of that association's academic advisory board, and will arrange to provide lesson plans to the association and contribute to their blog. The National Park Service is a United States government operated bureaucracy with each site retaining a degree of autonomy. The historical sites of memory that relate to Roosevelt entice more than 200,000 visitors annually and the park rangers reach out to thousands more students through education programmes. Supplying pamphlets has been welcomed by the cultural directors of these sites. The TR Center at Dickinson State University has beneficiaries in the mid-western United States, and their digital archive services audiences around the world. Productive discussions with the Center's Director continue on how best my research can help the Center. The impact pathways can be realised and these collaborations offer exceptional reach to research beneficiaries and contribute directly to the educational and cultural initiatives in the United States and internationally. Equally significant, the pathways complement the leadership activities embedded in the project. The strategy will provide me with new experience leading an international collaboration and partnering with organisations with diverse stakeholders. These organisations have indicated that academic attention on Roosevelt's legacy has the potential to increase public interest in their work and thereby sustains their operations. The underlying impact goes beyond disseminating research to stakeholder, but seeks to provide new avenues for preserving interest in historical sites and memorials.

As the centennial of Theodore Roosevelt's death approaches, my research and the pathways will mark me out as a leading scholarly expert. Although the centennial offers a generational moment, presidential history, legacy building, and U.S. political history will remain popular topics for a diverse group of academic and non-academic audiences. This project's pathways to impact will help single me out as a leader in these fields.