An expert on presidential history and national identity explores the complicated and conflicted ways Americans remember Thomas Jefferson and what these impressions reveal about the nation he helped to found.
Thomas Jefferson is everywhere. In Washington, DC, and on Mount Rushmore. In history textbooks and children’s picture books. On Broadway and HBO. Jefferson is even on our money—both the ubiquitous nickel and the rare $2 bill. The many different ways that Americans remember the third president of the United States tell us very little about Jefferson himself, but they tell us a lot about the American people.
In Remembering Jefferson, presidential scholar Mary E. Stuckey examines various sites where Jefferson appears—his home at Monticello, references by other presidents, monuments and memorials, popular culture, and children’s literature—as a way of interrogating national identity. She is less interested in the actual Jefferson than in how he is used across a variety of contexts to make claims about what it means to be American in the contemporary moment.
Stuckey finds that Jefferson is a remarkably useful and multipurpose symbol. He reminds people of the importance of the nation’s founding. He provides an opportunity to reflect on inclusion and exclusion, on race and racism. He gives people a way to ground national identity in the past, while keeping it open to change. Jefferson was so complicated and multilayered that he has been purposed to suit a variety of agendas throughout history and across the entire political spectrum.
In our fraught political moment, where debates over America’s founding have become cultural battlegrounds, Remembering Jefferson is a timely reminder that how we think about the past reflects who we are in the present.
About the Author :
Mary E. Stuckey is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of many books, including For the Enjoyment of the People: The Creation of National Identity in American Public Lands and Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity, both from the University Press of Kansas.
Review :
"Stuckey's Remembering Jefferson is remarkable, a brilliant exploration of the way presidents, monuments, movies, children's books, and more have made Thomas Jefferson both ubiquitous and obscure. This expertly crafted book is perfect for anyone curious about how collective memory and national identity relate more to the contested present than to any shared past." —Paul Stob, author of Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People
"Contingent is not normally the first adjective used to describe Thomas Jeferson however, distinguished presidential scholar Mary Stuckey contributes her dynamic analysis of how this founding father's political ideals, but not necessarily his policies, contribute to today's use of his memory. From his positions on freedom and enslavement to expansion and removal of Native Americans, to the roles of federal and state government, Dr. Stuckey insightfully illustrates how the wide variety of interpretations of Jefferson's legacy can be defended. Through Jefferson's representation in presidential speeches, children's books and films, monuments, and popular culture, this important analysis offers insights into U.S. history as complicated, flawed, and always changing, much like Jefferson himself." —Teresa Bergman, author of The Commemoration of Women in the United States: Remembering Women in Public Space
"Through a rhetorical analysis of the many Jeffersons circulating in public culture, Mary Stuckey's Remembering Jefferson offers an essential complement to the extant biographies of the third U.S. President. Rather than take on Thomas Jefferson's life as its point of departure, Remembering Jefferson centers the sites where Jefferson's public memory has been shaped and re-shaped over time to fit the needs of the present. These 82 sites, residing in the built environment as well as in popular culture, among a multitude of other places, demonstrate powerfully how a nation understands itself and attempts to forge a collective identity. In this way, Remembering Jefferson provides a critical opportunity to reflect on the role of rhetoric in public culture; its forms, its stories, and its impact." —Nicole Maurantonio, author of Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century
"If there is a go-to person in political rhetoric, it's Mary Stuckey, and she doesn't disappoint in this fascinating book on Thomas Jefferson as a manifold symbol of what Americans can or should think of themselves. That symbol is complex, even contradictory, and Stuckey demonstrates that well with representations of Jefferson in many different venues, ranging from monuments to children's literature. Enjoy the ride!" —Carole Blair, coeditor of Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials
"Remembering Jefferson traces how collective memories of the nation's third president have been cultivated, contested, and circulated in a variety of rhetorical forms. Through her close reading of presidential speeches, monuments and memorials, popular culture texts, and children's literature, Professor Stuckey demonstrates Jefferson's enduring place in the US public's imagination." —Allison M. Prasch, author of The World is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War
