2007 TR Symposium

Theodore Roosevelt and America’s Place in the World Arena

DSU Theodore Roosevelt Scholar in Residence and symposium moderator Clay Jenkinson addresses the audience on the historic importance of TR’s Elkhorn Ranch.

This year’s symposium focused on the years 1880-1919, a period in which the United States increased the size of its armed forces, particularly the Navy, acquired its first off-shore colonies, and challenged the great powers of Europe in the world’s arena. Roosevelt was the foremost advocate of this national movement, in his capacities as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Vice President and ultimately President of the United States.

The 2007 symposium featured presentations by widely acclaimed Roosevelt biographer H.W. Brands and noted authors and scholars John Milton Cooper, Kristin Hoganson, Lori Lyn Bogle, D. Jerome Tweton, symposium moderator Clay Jenkinson, Tweed Roosevelt, great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, DSU professor Steven Doherty and director of the DSU Theodore Roosevelt Honors Leadership Program Jon Brudvig.

The symposium also featured the live broadcast of the world premiere of “TR,” an old-style radio drama based on a play written by American playwright Allan Kenward and Roosevelt biographer Hermann Hagedorn.

Also included as part of the symposium was a field trip to Medora to see the Eberts Ranch on the east bank of the Little Missouri River. The acquisition of the 5,200-acre Eberts Ranch by the U.S. Forest Service insures that the view Theodore Roosevelt enjoyed from the veranda of his 30 x 60-foot Elkhorn Ranch will be protected forever. Symposium moderator and DSU Theodore Roosevelt Scholar in Residence Clay Jenkinson marked the occasion with a moving tribute to the Eberts family, Theodore Roosevelt and the Dakota badlands. That afternoon, prominent government officials and representatives of private conservation groups, including the Boone and Crockett Club, founded by Roosevelt in 1887, commemorated the historic purchase of the Eberts Ranch with a program at the Burning Hills Amphitheater in Medora.

Speakers

Dr. H. W. Brands

Henry William Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas.

He has written twenty books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His books include TR: The Last Romantic, The Money Men, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, What America Owes the World, and The Devil We Knew. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals.

His writings have received critical and popular acclaim. The First American was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize, as well as a New York Times bestseller. The Age of Gold was a Washington Post Best Book of 2002 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Andrew Jackson was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2005 and a Washington Post bestseller.

Dr. John Milton Cooper

John Milton Cooper is the E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and specializes in twentieth-century diplomatic history, Southern history and American political history.

His works focus on early twentieth-century American history and examine people, politics and ideologies that not only affected events of the time, but also influenced the future direction of American political culture. His 1983 book, The Warrior and the Priest, is a comparative study of the philosophies and personalities of American presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. The New York Times Book Review lauded the book as a “masterful portrait” whose “subject is less these two personalities than the political culture they reflected and shaped.”

Dr. Kristin Hoganson

Kristin Hoganson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in U.S. cultural history and the history of the United States in the world.

Her publications include Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale University Press, 1998) and Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

She has served as a council member for the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, an editorial board member for the Journal of Diplomatic History, and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

In 2005, she received the Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize for excellence in teaching and research in the field of foreign relations.

Dr. Lori Lyn Bogle

Lori Lyn Bogle is currently an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland where she teaches a variety of courses on social cultural military topics.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 1997. Her first book, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind: The Early Cold War (2004), examined the military’s traditional role in establishing and maintaining the contours of the American character and will. That study led to her current monograph, Selling the Navy on Theodore Roosevelt’s use of publicity and modern sociological principles to convince the American public of the need to acquire an offensive fleet (Texas A&M Press pending publication). She has written numerous articles and has edited a five volume collection of essays on the cold war.

Dr. D. Jerome Tweton

D. Jerome Tweton is Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Dakota and a senior consultant to the North Dakota Humanities Council.

His academic interests focus on North Dakota, the Great Plains, and the United States from 1890 to 1945. In addition to many scholarly articles, Tweton also is the author of seven books. His major publications include a biography of the Marquis de Mores, a history of the labor movement in North Dakota, and three books on the Great Depression in North Dakota and Minnesota. Tweton also is a well-know interpreter of the life of Theodore Roosevelt.

Tweed Roosevelt

Tweed Roosevelt is the great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. He is a lecturer as well as a frequent contributor to articles, books, and projects related to the life and times of Theodore Roosevelt. A member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) of Oyster Bay, New York’s Trustee Class of 2006, Roosevelt also serves on that organization’s executive committee.

In 1992, Roosevelt spent his 50th birthday following in the footsteps of his famous forebear and rafted down the treacherous 1,000 mile Rio Roosevelt in Brazil. This was the same river, then called the Rio da Duvida –the River of Doubt – that his great grandfather explored in 1914.

Clay Jenkinson

Clay Jenkinson is Theodore Roosevelt scholar in residence at Dickinson State University. He is a Rhodes and Danforth scholar, author and first-person historical interpreter.

As a renowned humanities scholar, Jenkinson travels widely giving lectures on a variety of topics and performing as Thomas Jefferson, Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Theodore Roosevelt. He adopts the persona of Jefferson each week for his nationally syndicated ratio show, The Thomas Jefferson Hour®.

Jenkinson is the author of Theodore Roosevelt in the Dakota Badlands, Message on the Wind, A Vast and Open Plain, Becoming Jefferson’s People, The Character of Meriwether Lewis, and A Lewis and Clark Chapbook.

Jenkinson also authors a weekly column in the “Dakota” section of the Bismarck Tribune.

Dr. Steven Doherty

Steven Doherty is an assistant professor of political science at Dickinson State University. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1999 from Loyola University Chicago, his master’s degree in political science from Iowa State University in 1990 and his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Superior in 1986.

Dr. Jon Brudvig

Jon Brudvig recently joined Dickinson State University as director of the Theodore Roosevelt Honors Leadership Program. Brudvig comes to DSU from the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D., where he served as the History Teaching Program Director. He received his doctorate in United States history from the College of William and Mary in 1996, his master’s degree in United States history from Marquette University in 1989 and his bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy from Marquette University in 1987.

Photos

Symposium participants breakfast at the Chuckwagon Grill in Medora, ND on Saturday morning before heading out to the Eberts Ranch.	View from the ridge on the Eberts Ranch looking west toward the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch on the Little Missouri River.
Symposium participants savor the view of the Little Missouri River.	David Pieper of the U.S. Forest Service addresses the symposium crowd gathered at the Eberts Ranch.
Symposium participants gather to listen to a presentation on the significance of the Eberts Ranch sale and TR’s Elkhorn Ranch.	Charts, maps and related materials provided by the U.S. Forest service helped explain the history and significance of the Eberts Ranch acquisition by the federal agency.
DSU Theodore Roosevelt Scholar in Residence and symposium moderator Clay Jenkinson addresses the audience on the historic importance of TR’s Elkhorn Ranch.	The field trip to the Eberts Ranch on Saturday occurred on a picture perfect day in the North Dakota badlands.
Ken and Nora Eberts listen attentively to Clay Jenkinson’s tribute to TR’s badlands legacy.	Deputy Secretary of Interior P. Lynn Scarlett acknowledges members of the Eberts family for their commitment to preserving the ranchland that overlooks the location of Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch site.
Elkhorn Ranchlands Dedication, “The Cradle of Conservation,” at the Burning Hills Amphitheatre in Medora, ND.	Dr. John Milton Cooper, E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin-Madision, addressed attendees in his presentation “TR’s Last Great Battle: with Woodrow Wilson.”
Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of Theodore, speaks on “Roosevelt in the Caribbean” to symposium guests at the Tjaden Terrace above the Burning Hills Amphitheatre in Medora, ND.	North Dakota governor John Hoeven lead a distinguished group of speakers at the national commemoration of the acquisition of the Eberts Ranch by the U.S. Forest Service, held at the Burning Hills Amphitheatre in Medora, ND.
The 2007 symposium featured a gallery of cartoons from a variety of early twentieth century newspapers and magazines that both praise and lampoon TR’s life and career.	“TR: That Man in the White House,” a radio drama based on a play written by American playwright Allan Kenward with the help of Roosevelt biographer Hermann Hagedorn, was broadcast live as part of the symposium.
Among the large throng of guests at the Elkhorn Ranch site ceremony were (left to right) Dr. Lee Vickers, DSU president; Deanna Vickers, chair, Theodore Roosevelt Initiative; Dr. H.W. Brands, keynote speaker; Clay Jenkinson, DSU TR scholar in residence and symposium moderator; and Dr. John Milton Cooper, guest scholar.	Following his keynote presentation, H.W. Brands signed copies of his highly acclaimed biography of Roosevelt, TR: The Last Romantic.
Historian Edmund Morris, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, addresses the audience at the Eberts Ranch commemoration.	On Saturday, September 15, state and federal officials and private conservation groups commemorated the historic purchase of the 5,200-acre Eberts Ranch by the U.S. Forest Service with a program at the outdoor amphitheatre in Medora, ND.
Symposium guests wind down with a reception at the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora, ND.	Dr. Kristin Hoganson, associate professor of history at the University of Illinois, spoke to symposium attendees about Theodore Roosevelt in a presentation titled “Bestriding the World Like a (Manly) Colossus.”
Dr. Lori Lyn Bogle, associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy, intrigued symposium guests with her presentation “Roosevelt and the U.S. Navy.”	Dr. D. Jerome Tweton, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Dakota and a senior consultant to the North Dakota Humanities Council, spoke on “That Other Dakota Internationalist: The Marquis de Mores.”
Executive director of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, Darrell Dorgan, and DSU student body president, Lydia Johnson, interview “TR” (aka Clay Jenkinson) before the world premiere of the old-time radio drama “TR: That Man in the White House.”	“TR: Man of the Hour,” a newsreel documenting Roosevelt’s rise to the presidency, preceded the radio drama in DSU’s Dorothy Stickney Auditorium.
Clay Jenkinson as TR takes center stage during the live broadcast of the old-time radio drama “TR: That Man in the White House.”	Theodore Roosevelt (Clay Jenkinson) exchanges words with Senator Marcus Hannah (Ed Sahlstrom) during “TR: That Man in the White House,” broadcast live by radio station KLTC.
Deanna Vickers, chair, Theodore Roosevelt Initiative, and Dr. Lee Vickers, DSU president, have been driving forces behind the effort to make DSU a national center of Roosevelt scholarship and to encourage heritage tourism in the region.	Dr. H.W. Brands, symposium keynote speaker, kicked off the event with his presentation “Theodore Roosevelt and the Creation of the Modern World.”