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With words and images of Theodore Roosevelt, this lesson plan introduces high school and undergraduate students to the history of masculinity. Historians no longer use the terms "gender history" and "women's history" interchangeably. Recent scholarship, for instance, has examined how prevailing views of "men," "manhood," and "masculinity" changed over time. Furthermore, historians have discussed how TR's character and behavior "helped produce modern twentieth-century ideologies of powerful American manhood" (I).
No single figure in American history better demonstrates the influence and power of masculinity in history than Theodore Roosevelt. Historians Sarah Watts, Kristin Hoganson, and Gail Bederman, among others, argue that TR's private cultivation, and public assertions, of masculinity appealed to other men of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (2). TR vigorously participated in the aggressive, manly activities of strenuous hiking, big game hunting, and long rides on horseback. As President of the United States, he used the office as a "bully pulpit" to introduce wide-ranging social reforms. Although TR won the Nobel Peace prize in 1905, he fought for American interests abroad with "big stick" diplomacy, while building and parading American naval power around the world. "Roosevelfs experience in the Spanish-American War," writes Hoganson, "strengthened his belief that military endeavors built manhood" (3).
By scrutinizing Roosevelt's own words, as well as photos and political cartoons, students begin to assess how TR's trumpeting of manly virtues affected American politics, culture, and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They study how Roosevelt became a proponent of the "strenuous life" to prepare virile men in a nation poised for global leadership. TR's masculine persona and rhetoric, moreover, "touched a nerve" among men unsure of their place, as women increasingly demanded a public role in American politics. Whether scrambling up mountains or hunting big game, TR modeled vigorous behavior that distinguished men from women. With the help of cooperative news writers, who continually published stories of his physical exploits, Roosevelt became the "most famous purveyor" of manly activity as an antidote to the "fear of the feminization of American men" (4). Did TR's words reflect manly attributes? If so, did they influence development of American society, culture, and politics of the time? Why were men attracted to Roosevelf s assertions of rugged manly virtues?...