Recovering Roosevelt : Memory and the Restoration of American Exceptionalism in Contemporary Visual Culture
出版項
2019
說明
1 online resource (223 pages)
文字
text
無媒介
computer
成冊
online resource
附註
Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-10, Section: A
Advisor: Stein, Sarah;Orgeron, Devin;Zagacki, Kenneth;Pacifici, Jamian;Gallagher, Victoria
Thesis (Ph.D.)--North Carolina State University, 2019
Includes bibliographical references
Scholars and historians have long noted that in many of Theodore Roosevelt's publications notions of masculinity are synonymous with American national character (Cullinane, 2017; Dorsey, 2007; McCullough, 2003). As such, this dissertation looks at the rhetorical values inscribed in the act of preserving the image of Teddy Roosevelt in contemporary popular culture. Through a rhetorical analysis of multiple case studies, including the American Museum of Natural History's efforts to restore the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, my own auto-ethnographic account of the Roosevelt Memorial on Roosevelt Island as a way to illustrate the rhetorical agency of the researcher/visitor, an illumination of the archival work of Ken Burns in The Roosevelts (2014), and finally an examination of performances in episodes from Comedy Central's Drunk History and You Tube's Epic Rap Battles of History, I demonstrate how these texts participate in rhetorical reconstructions of history that serve to restore common "essential" characteristics which lie at the nexus of American national identity and patriarchal rule. Further analysis and explanation is needed in order to determine the extent to which discourses and their visual and material instantiations are visual exemplars of how old ways of thinking become templates for understanding present-day circumstances and events in our current national/political moment. Through these case studies, my overall aim for this project is to understand how and to what extent public memory is used as a lens to articulate contemporary notions of American identity and citizenship. Examining these practices not only helps us to discover the rhetorical interpretations and implications of Roosevelt remerging as an iconic symbol of Americanism, but also potentially provides a greater understanding and awareness of the rhetorical limitations to recovering institutionalized histories.Thus, with this study rhetorical critics may better understand the impact of visual culture through uses which highlight material changes to artifacts/ commemorative sites, and how and to what extent these communication networks act as nodes of memory which work together to circulate specific collective values of identity, rather than just focusing on the rhetorical output of singular texts or issues regarding representation alone. As such, I see this dissertation as a contribution to visual rhetoric not solely because of the performativity of these texts, but because of the extent to which the fluid nature of their material components and composition craft identities along with the audiences that perform them. I refer to this as the flow of memory
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest, 2020
