Leroy G. Dorsey of Texas A&M University is the recipient of the 2008 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for his book We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism. The book was published by the University of Alabama Press. The Nichols Award is an award of the Public Address Division.

This book examines Theodore Roosevelt's public rhetoric—speeches, essays, and narrative histories—as he attempted to craft one people out of many. Dorsey observes that Roosevelt's solution to the problem appeared straightforward: everyone could become "Americans, pure and simple" if they embraced his notion of "Americanism." Roosevelt grounded his idea of Americanism in myth, particularly the frontier myth—a heroic combination of individual strength and character. When nonwhites and immigrants demonstrated these traits, they would become true Americans, earning an exalted status that they had heretofore been denied.

Dorsey's analysis illuminates how Roosevelt's rhetoric achieved a number of delicate, if problematic, balancing acts. Roosevelt gave his audiences the opportunity to accept a national identity that allowed "some" room for immigrants and nonwhites, while reinforcing their status as others, thereby reassuring white Americans of their superior place in the nation. Roosevelt's belief in an ordered and unified nation did not overwhelm his private racist attitudes, Dorsey argues, but certainly competed with them. Despite his private sentiments, he recognized that racist beliefs and rhetoric were divisive and bad for the nation?s progress. The resulting message he chose to propagate was thus one of a rhetorical, if not literal, melting pot.

The selection committee was chaired by the Division's immediate past-chair, Lisa Shawn Hogan of Penn State University. The other members of the committee are Carl Burgchardt of Colorado State University and James Darsey of Georgia State University.

Vice-Chair and 2008 program planner Charles Morris III has also announced the recipient of the 2008 Wrage-Baskerville Award (Top Contributed Paper) and the 2008 Robert Gunderson Award (Top Student Paper). For the first time, the awards are presented to the same individual, Eric S. Jenkins of the University of Georgia, for his paper "The Towers of Babble and the Passage of the USA Patriot Act."

On its twentieth anniversary, the Public Address Conference will return to the institution that first hosted it, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thus, the 2008  Public Address Conference will be held in Madison, Wisconsin,  September 25-27, 2008. The conference theme is “Representing the Republic,” which provokes exploration of such topics as debates over  representation in electoral politics; the aesthetics of political representation; representations of the American republic and how  they have been mobilized to claim power; the decline of republican  rhetorics, the rise of global citizenship, and the role of new  communication technologies in global protest; and the relationship between republicanism and religious rhetoric.

The keynote speaker will be Professor John M. Murphy, currently at the University of Georgia.

The conference will honor Professor Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, of the University of Minnesota.

Other featured speakers include John Lucaites, Angela Ray, Stephen Lucas, Catherine R. Squiers, Joshua Gunn, and Erik Doxtader.

For more information, visit the Public Address Conference Web site.

The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women & Politics at Iowa State University is currently developing two archives of women's political communication — (1) a virtual (web-based) archive of women's political speech and (2) a videotape collection of women political candidates' campaign commercials.

The Archive of Women's Political Communication is made possible through a generous gift from Richard and Mary Jo Stanley of Muscatine, IA.

For more information, contact Dianne Bystrom, Iowa State University, dbystrom@iastate.edu