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September 2018 THE 13TH ANNUAL THEODORE ROOSEVELT SYMPOSIUM: WOMEN IN THE ARENA (AND A BIT OF ROOSEVELT, TOO)
By: Salena Loveland, student intern
Dickinson State University (DSU) and the Theodore Roosevelt Center (TR Center) are proud to host the Theodore Roosevelt Symposium Sept. 20-22, 2018. This year’s theme, “Women in the Arena (and a bit of Roosevelt, too),” promises to enlighten attendees on the role women played in Roosevelt’s life as well as the influences they had on his decisions in both his political and private lives. Lectures and discussions will be in May Hall on the DSU campus Thursday evening and all day Friday with a field trip to Medora Saturday. On the surface, Roosevelt might appear to be a contradiction. On the one hand, he seems hyper-masculine because he believed that the woman’s role was to bear as many children as possible while on the other hand he argued for better protections and broader rights for women. The goal of the 2018 symposium is to delve deeper to clarify the seeming contradictions. Audience members can expect “insight, perspective, great TR stories, lots of humor, and a serious examination of the place of women in TR’s life, women and the progressive movement,” stated Clay Jenkinson, primary consultant and humanities scholar at the TR Center. The TR Center has wanted to focus a symposium on this theme for a while. Considering the current atmosphere surrounding women’s issues, those involved in deciding the symposium’s topic felt now was a good time. “This is a time when America is doing some serious self-examination about the status of women—in the workplace, in politics, in the family,” Jenkinson said. “Our choice to do this symposium on this topic was decided for other reasons, but the Me Too movement has made it all the more timely, relevant and even important.” “[The idea for the Theodore Roosevelt Symposium] started 14 years ago when the then president of DSU, Dr. Lee Vickers, agreed that we should try to be one of the most significant convening places for TR discourse,” shared Jenkinson. “We have brought the best scholars and thinkers about Roosevelt to western North Dakota, and we have been able to get existing scholars to think about TR in new ways and have generated brand-new scholarship for young scholars. We are truly proud of what we have done. Virtually all of our presenters tell us they wish they had visited North Dakota before they wrote their book!” When asked why people should attend this year’s symposium, Jenkinson replied, “We have a well-deserved reputation for creating outstanding public humanities symposiums. Our speakers tell us that they have seldom if ever been to conferences or symposia that have as much real conversation as ours, as much joy and as much playfulness. Our symposia are so good that last year’s, for example, is being turned into a book.” To experience this year’s phenomenal program, be sure to make room in your schedules to attend some, if not all, of the events. Everyone is welcome. Lectures and discussions, through the generous sponsorship of the North Dakota Humanities Council, are free. Registration prices covering meals, materials, and the field trip to Medora vary depending on how many days you wish to attend. To register for the symposium or for more information, please visit www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org or contact the Theodore Roosevelt Center at (701)-483-2814 The Theodore Roosevelt Center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of America’s 26th president. The TR Center has undertaken the monumental task of creating a presidential digital library that will serve as a repository for all Roosevelt-related documents, photographs and ephemera, providing instant access via the internet in a well-organized, comprehensible manner. The TR Center also hosts an annual Theodore Roosevelt Symposium as well as special Roosevelt-related events, promotes Roosevelt scholarship and offers student internships.
2018 THEODORE ROOSEVELT SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS This year’s Theodore Roosevelt Symposium, “Women in the Arena (and a bit of Roosevelt, too),” offers the opportunity to hear from several experts on the topic of women and the roles they played in Roosevelt’s life. Continue reading to learn about their symposium presentations, a little about who they are. Virginia Scharff - “If Theodore Roosevelt Were a Woman” Based on the biography of TR, Virginia Scharff will explore pivotal experiences and ideas in Theodore Roosevelt’s life that would have gone very differently had he been born into his world as a female. Celebrated figures in women’s history, including Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Alice Longworth, will be considered for comparison. Virginia Scharff is Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico. She has published numerous books including “Home Lands: How Women Made the West” and “Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.” Her most recent book, “The Women Jefferson Loved,” was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She is also the author of four mystery suspense novels, written under the name of Virginia Swift: “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “Bad Company,” “Bye, Bye, Love” and “Hello, Stranger.” What drew you to history in general and to women in history especially? I have been interested in history ever since I was a small child. My mother volunteered at the Missouri Historical Society, then generally known as the Jefferson Memorial in St. Louis. I loved to go there and look at the exhibits,
and I was fascinated by Jefferson. I became interested in women’s history when I realized how women’s stories had been ignored, erased and falsified. I wrote my first book about women drivers because my suburban mother spent hours each week driving carpools. She was part of a national transportation system that was entirely unpaid and unrecorded. What are you most looking forward to regarding the Theodore Roosevelt Symposium? I look forward to meeting the dedicated people who have made this symposium so successful for years. It is a model public humanities program! I also look forward to reconnecting with old friends, and learning a lot from the other scholars and presenters as well as the audience. Could you please share one thing you learned while researching your presentation topic that impressed you, surprised you or otherwise stuck with you? I will be speaking on the question, “What If Theodore Roosevelt Had Been Born a Woman?” I was often amazed at the creativity and determination with which women in his world confronted limitations and discrimination. What do you hope audience members will take away from your presentation? I hope audience members will want to know more about the fascinating women I will discuss, and might even begin to see TR in a new light. Kimberly Hamlin - “Rough Riders, Bearded Ladies and Suffragists: Gender in the Age of TR” For generations of Americans, Theodore Roosevelt revolutionized and then personified what it meant to be a man in America. The storied manliness of TR attracted followers and photographers, intimidated opponents, and helped to cement his unique legacy. At the same time, Roosevelt had a lot to say about what the ideal woman should be like—strong, maternal and very fertile—the type of woman that many Progressive Era women no longer aspired to be. This talk will explore how Roosevelt’s macho image shaped his approach to politics, foreign affairs and women’s rights, including his stance on women’s suffrage and his relationships with female reformers. Author of “From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America,” Kimberly A. Hamlin researches, writes, and speaks about the history of women in America. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and is writing the biography of Helen Hamilton Gardener, the suffragists’ lead negotiator to President Woodrow Wilson and Congress and the woman who donated her brain to science to prove the intellectual equality of women. Hamlin is an associate professor of history and American Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Stacy Cordery - “Defining a Woman’s Duty: The Effect of The Roosevelt Women on TR’s Views About Women” Theodore Roosevelt’s sense of women was always bound up in his over-arching commitment to the concept of duty. Duty was his life-long measuring stick. A woman’s duty, for Roosevelt, simultaneously was defined by and transcended her gender. The shaping of his increasingly broad-minded thinking concerning women’s roles began in his own family. His observations of and conversations with his mother, sisters, wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, and nieces helped him work out what became his public positions, many of which found their way into legislation during the Progressive Era. This talk will examine the influences of the women in the Roosevelt family and explore how his unique relationship with them allowed his views concerning women and their public and private duties to evolve, even as they retained aspects of the societal expectations of his mother’s generation. “Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker” was a New York Times Notable Book. Cordery has also published two books about Theodore Roosevelt. She is a professor of history at Iowa State University, the bibliographer for the National First Ladies Library, and a visiting distinguished scholar with the Theodore Roosevelt Center. She is currently working on a biography of American entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden. What drew you to history in general and to women in history especially? I am a historical biographer and interested in how the decisions of people shape their lives and the lives of those around them. My interest in the Roosevelt women began in graduate school when I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation about the concept of celebrity and First Daughter Alice Roosevelt.