2022 TR Symposium
The Athlete in the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt and the Development of Modern Sports
In its 17th public humanities symposium, the Theodore Roosevelt Center will explore the athletic world in the Age of Roosevelt, and changing American notions of physical fitness against the era’s social transformations. Topics will include the beginnings of basketball, the taming of collegiate football, the social and cultural search for “the strenuous life,” the debate over physical education for women, and TR’s own life as a sportsman, including boxing, wrestling, stick fighting, point-to-point hiking, skiing, and martial arts.
We are thrilled to have several award-winning authors speaking at the symposium, including Anne Blaschke, who will speak on the history of Title IX, Simon Cordery, who will speak on “the strenuous life” as a remedy to anxieties of the Gilded Age, and Ryan Swanson, who will speak on Theodore Roosevelt’s relationship to athletics. Our keynote speaker will be Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon and Remembering Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries. The authors will be available for book signings and will be brought together for a panel on the final day of the event. Also on the final day of the symposium, Theodore Roosevelt Humanities Scholar Clay Jenkinson will lead an educational hike in the Badlands.
The symposium also coincides with the grand opening of a new space on campus for the TR Center, which will include offices for staff, scholars, and student workers, living quarters for students of the Theodore Roosevelt Honors Leadership Program, video and podcasting studios, event space, exhibition galleries, archival storage, and more. In addition to a well-stocked research library, the building will house a scale replica of Roosevelt’s reading room at Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, which will include copies of many of the books that Roosevelt himself owned. With this new space, the TR Center will be able to exponentially increase its efforts towards becoming the central hub for scholarly research on Theodore Roosevelt and the world in which he lived.
To register for the symposium, follow this link: https://dsu-ndus.nbsstore.net/theodore-roosevelt-symposium. Registration is $175 for all three days, or reduced rates for individual days. Virtual attendance is available for $50. Attendance is free to all DSU faculty, staff, and students. Students and faculty from all schools and universities will also be free, meals not included.
This symposium is supported by the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation. It is also funded in part by Humanities North Dakota, a non-profit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Schedule Highlights
Please note, this is not the full schedule, but a condensed version containing some of the biggest events!
Thursday, September 15
7:00 pm* – Welcome remarks by DSU President Steve Easton, TR Humanities Scholar Clay Jenkinson
7:30 pm – Keynote address by Michael Cullinane
8:30 pm – Reception with DSU TR Experts
Friday, September 16
8:00 am – Breakfast
8:30 am – Opening remarks by Clay Jenkinson
9:00 am – Lecture and Q&A with Simon Cordery
10:45 am – Lecture and Q&A with Anne Blaschke
12:00 pm – Lunch
1:00 pm – Lecture and Q&A with Ryan Swanson
2:00 pm – Coaches’ Panel
2:45 pm – Book signing
3:15 pm – Pulver Hall Grand Opening
5:30 pm – Dinner
7:00 pm – Evening edutainment – Glee club and historic sporting event exhibitions
Saturday, September 17
8:00 am – Breakfast
8:45 am – Edward S. Curtis exhibit lecture by Clay Jenkinson
10:45 am – Speaker panel at the Life Skills Center in Medora
12:00 pm – Lunch
12:45 pm – Hike in the Badlands with Clay Jenkinson or Medora Walking Tour with Joe Wiegand
4:00 pm – Closing reception at the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame
*All times in Mountain Daylight Time
Speaker Bios
MICHAEL PATRICK CULLINANE has published several books including the award-winning Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon and his latest book Remembering Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries which unearths never before heard oral histories about the former president. His broader interests include diplomatic history and transatlantic relations, reflecting his education and experience on both sides of the “pond.” When he’s not writing or watching baseball, Cullinane plays host on The Gilded Age and Progressive Era, a fortnightly podcast about the United States and the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
ANNE BLASCHKE is a historian of twentieth-century U.S. political culture at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She also teaches in the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality at M.I.T. Blaschke has recently published academic articles on U.S. political economy, diplomatic engagement, and athletes’ immigration, and also writes publicly for the Washington Post and other outlets. She is revising her first book, Foxes, Not Oxes: Women’s Athletics in American Political Culture, for publication. Title IX—the 1972 law mandating sex equality in American education—is the subject of her second book project. She is also conducting an extensive oral history project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Title IX.
SIMON CORDERY is an award-winning author and historian of the transatlantic modern world. He has published three books and numerous academic articles, and is currently completing a biography of Albert Benton Pullman, brother of the more famous George Pullman. He is also working on a biography of the Republican politician Marcus A. Hanna, who planned the McKinley presidential campaigns of 1896 and 1900. Chair of the History Department at Iowa State University, he teaches sports history and the history of modern Britain.
RYAN SWANSON is an Associate Professor of history, in the Honors College, at the University of New Mexico. He also serves as the Director of the Lobo Scholars Program. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University 2008. His latest book, The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete, came out in 2019. Swanson’s When Baseball Went White: Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Dreams of a National Pastime won the SABR Baseball Research Award in 2015. Swanson has published widely on the role of athletics in the United States. In the classroom, Ryan teaches courses on sports, history, and the legacy of failure. During the pandemic, Ryan was one of those professors who frequently forgot to unmute himself while talking on Zoom. Ryan and his wife Rachael have three children. They reside in Corrales, NM.
Registration
To register for the symposium, follow this link: https://dsu-ndus.nbsstore.net/theodore-roosevelt-symposium.
Registration is $175 for all three days, or reduced rates for individual days. Virtual attendance is available for $50. Attendance is free to all DSU faculty, staff, and students! Students and faculty from all schools and universities will also be free, meals not included.
Lodging options include:
LA QUINTA INN & SUITES BY WYNDHAM
8-minute drive from Dickinson State University
552 12th St W, Dickinson
(701) 456-2500
$75 plus tax – Standard Room King/Double Queen $85 plus tax – King Suite
Reservation deadline – August 31, 2022
ROOSEVELT GRAND DAKOTA LODGE
10-minute drive from Dickinson State University
532 15th Street West, Dickinson
(701) 483-5600
$79 plus tax – Standard Room $99 plus tax – Suite
Reservation deadline – August 31, 2022
ELKHORN QUARTERS
40-minute drive from Dickinson State University
400 East River Road South, Medora
1-800-MEDORA-1 ext: 8500
$105 plus tax – Wed/Thu $115 plus tax – Fri/Sat
Reservation deadline – August 31, 2022
This symposium is supported by the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation. It is also funded in part by Humanities North Dakota, a non-profit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.