Memorial Communities and Presidential Legacy: Remembering Theodore Roosevelt

自1919年去世以来，西奥多·罗斯福一直被认为是一个粗犷的牛仔英雄，一个进步的“反托拉斯人”，他的形象甚至以“泰迪熊”的形式保存了下来。广告商、电影制片厂和运动队都利用罗斯福的肖像来销售咖啡，提高电视收视率，并宣传体育赛事。虽然关于罗斯福的生平，特别是他的总统任期，人们写了很多东西，但他死后的形象和遗产几乎完全被忽视了。然而，由于罗斯福经常被提及，对他的遗产的研究对于理解召唤他的一代又一代纪念者的动机至关重要。这个项目集中在历史学、媒体、政治和公共纪念馆中对罗斯福的无数文化表现，旨在分析构成他遗产的社区和个人。纪念社区资助并组织了相当大的网络，传播各种不同的肖像。通过考察这些代表，这项研究将提供一个关于罗斯福遗产的全面看法。这一学术研究对总统历史和记忆研究的更广泛研究具有重要意义。纪念碑、媒体、史学和政治祈祷对我们对过去的记忆有什么影响？这个项目通过使用西奥多·罗斯福的遗产来理解随着时间的推移塑造了他的公共记忆的人、组织和历史背景来回答这个问题。这个项目建立在我的博士学位的基础上，但又将其带入了新的和显著扩展的方向。虽然我的博士学位专注于西奥多·罗斯福担任总统期间的美国外交政策，但这个项目是由对罗斯福去世后的遗产和1919年后的历史背景提出的新问题推动的。自2008年以来，我制作了关于罗斯福总统遗产的高质量出版物，并在与历史学家、图书馆馆长、公园馆长甚至主要的罗斯福纪念协会协商后构思了这个项目。该项目的研究问题需要与历史和不同来源以外的学科接触，以了解产生许多罗斯福形象的文化背景。罗斯福在电影、电视、流行广告、视觉文化和公共艺术中的表现将与传统的档案材料、政治宣言和史学文献一起使用，以全面了解他的遗产。广泛的学术和非学术受众将从这项研究中受益，它通过纳入记忆研究，为总统历史提供了一种智力创新的方法。一部专著的发表将对美国历史和美国研究的组成部分学科做出重大贡献。与迪金森州立大学的TR中心、西奥多·罗斯福协会和美国国家公园服务局的合作项目将有助于使知识交流和利益相关者参与成为该项目的内在组成部分。这些目标将通过参与活动来实现，这些活动旨在使研究扩展到更广泛的公众受众，并影响当代对西奥多·罗斯福的看法。同时，这些合作将在研究交流方面提供创新。

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.