Welcome to my author site. I study gender and women’s history, with a focus on the early twentieth century.
University of Washington Press Blog Q and A for Oregon’s Others.
Western History Association Book Signing, October 25, 2024
Barbara Lloyd McKnight, Bookmonger: “Oregon’s Others” a Century Ago
Oregon’s Others: Gender, Civil Liberties, and the Surveillance State in the Early Twentieth Century is now available from the University of Washington Press.
Advance praise for Oregon’s Others:
“How safe are our civil rights today? What can we learn from those whose liberties have been challenged? Kim Jensen’s scrutiny of Oregon’s past exclusionary policies brings caution for our own roles as citizens. Her deep inquiry into those who challenged policies discriminating against gender, race, ethnicity, and ability highlights our need to be vigilant against continual challenges of ‘we’ versus ‘they.'”
– Linda Tamura, author of Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River
“Kimberly Jensen’s exceptional contribution to American gender history deconstructs the chilling connections between the success of woman suffrage in Oregon in 1912 and the shocking attacks on civil rights, particularly of women, in the state during World War I and the white-supremacist 1920s. The targets were the most vulnerable—sex workers, foreign nationals, wards of the state, gender nonconformists, and other ‘undesirables.’ Yet through these people’s tragic stories, including their resistance, Jensen offers hope for the nation.”
– Peter Boag, author of Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon
“Makes a significant contribution to scholarship on gendered citizenship and relationships of liberty and policing in the early twentieth century through its thorough examination of these issues from various angles in a state that was at the forefront of surveillance in that era.”
– Cynthia Prescott, author of Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory
Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (University of Washington Press, 2012) 
“Jensen has unearthed an extraordinary level of detail about the life and work of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy …address[ing] a number of themes, including women in medicine, social justice, women’s rights, politics, peace activism, public health, international health, and health activism. – Susan Smith, Bulletin of the History of Medicine
“Jensen’s careful political contextualization [demonstrates] a great deal about Portland politics, western women’s Progressive agenda, and women physicians’ medical activism. Indeed, in our own profoundly conservative time, when many of the ideas and policies Lovejoy fought for are on the chopping block, her vigorous civic engagement and passionate, no-nonsense commitment to social welfare generate nostalgia for her era, one still full of promise. — Regina Morantz-Sanchez, American Historical Review
“Jensen offers a richly textured narrative of Lovejoy’s remarkable life, opening a window into the worlds of Northwest timber country, Progressive Era Portland, and the medical profession during the early twentieth century. . . immensely valuable addition to the history of women, social reform, and medicine . . . – Marisa Chappell, Oregon Historical Quarterly
“Kimberly Jensen has written an incredibly rich, exhaustively researched biography. A simple narrative chronology of this exceptional woman would alone be exciting to read. But Jensen gives us so much more. – Barbara Winslow, Journal of American History
“. . . a vivid biography of the pioneering physician and activist Esther Pohl Lovejoy. Jensen does an excellent job of bringing to life the story of Esther Pohl Lovejoy. Jensen’s writing is approachable for undergraduates as well as graduates. – Cody Stanley, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (University of Illinois Press, 2008)
“As we struggle to understand the roots of violence against women and also to train women in the military and police forces to exercise violence in the name of the state, Kimberly Jensen’s timely book helps us place important challenges in historical context. Jensen’s imaginative research reveals many unappreciated dimensions of the First World War; her wise analysis deepens our understanding of civilian and military culture. An important book.”–Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship
“The archives and popular printed magazines and papers that Jensen has tracked down are full of juicy insight into both the anti-suffrage and suffrage debates. She does a superb job of showing the reader how America’s entrance into WWI affected those suffrage debates and discourses.”–Cynthia Enloe, author of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics and Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives
“Jensen astutely analyzes the interplay between US women’s attempts to attain professional and civic equality and overcome gender-based violence during WWI. . . . She expertly interweaves case studies and gender representations from women activists, popular culture, wartime propaganda, real-life accounts, and a host of other sources. Highly recommended.”–Choice
“Not simply a tale about World War I or the women’s suffrage movement, but a story of the complicated intersection of gender, citizenship, violence, and war in the early twentieth century.”–H-Minerva
“Mobilizing Minerva is a useful analysis that contributes thoughtfully to the history of women, gender, war, and antiviolence activism and joins a growing body of literature that places the suffrage campaign within a much wider context of women’s activism.”–Oregon Historical Quarterly
“Kimberly Jensen’s study of women in the First World War is a valuable contribution to the expanding scholarship on the American social and military history of that conflict.”–Military History
“A fascinating and well-researched book on the mobilization of American women during the First World War.”–Minerva Journal of Women and War