On this site I share information about my research and writing projects in women's and Oregon history and post news about my research, presentations, and related events.
Visit my blog for updates on my research. For information about my teaching at Western Oregon, visit www.wou.edu/kimjensen |
I'll be presenting a talk on Bend women's anti-violence activism in the early 1920s at the Bend History Pub at McMenamin's Old St. Francis School, Tuesday, July 28, 2015 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Des Chutes Historical Museum, the Oregon Encyclopedia, the Oregon Historical Society, and McMenamins Old St. Francis School.
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My current research project is a book-length study tentatively titled “Civic Borderlands: Oregon Women, Citizenship, Civil Liberties and the Surveillance State, 1913-1924.”
Because Oregon women achieved the vote before most women in the nation their subsequent civic activism was path breaking and significant and they also faced early challenges to their citizenship claims. Oregon had some vital “firsts” in the history of women’s citizenship, including Oregon’s unique history of women’s jury service and office holding. Some Oregon women understood citizenship as comprising rights to health care and control of reproduction, and others safety against gender-based violence. Diverse women were active in clubs and associations as an expression of their civic roles, lobbied for legislation to benefit women and their communities, and claimed economic citizenship in the professional and wage workforce. My research explores how various Oregon women thought about and acted upon concepts of female citizenship in this period. This study will consider women from diverse communities of color, sexual identity, class, and immigration, a range of regions in the state, women with radical and reform strategies, and conservative women. Questions of the growth of the surveillance state and the fragility of women’s civil liberties in the First World War and its aftermath will be central to the analysis. Many Americans and Oregonians defined citizenship by honing their concepts of “enemy”, “subversion”, and “Americanism” through legislation and other policies and practices during this period and these concepts were gendered in powerful ways.
Because Oregon women achieved the vote before most women in the nation their subsequent civic activism was path breaking and significant and they also faced early challenges to their citizenship claims. Oregon had some vital “firsts” in the history of women’s citizenship, including Oregon’s unique history of women’s jury service and office holding. Some Oregon women understood citizenship as comprising rights to health care and control of reproduction, and others safety against gender-based violence. Diverse women were active in clubs and associations as an expression of their civic roles, lobbied for legislation to benefit women and their communities, and claimed economic citizenship in the professional and wage workforce. My research explores how various Oregon women thought about and acted upon concepts of female citizenship in this period. This study will consider women from diverse communities of color, sexual identity, class, and immigration, a range of regions in the state, women with radical and reform strategies, and conservative women. Questions of the growth of the surveillance state and the fragility of women’s civil liberties in the First World War and its aftermath will be central to the analysis. Many Americans and Oregonians defined citizenship by honing their concepts of “enemy”, “subversion”, and “Americanism” through legislation and other policies and practices during this period and these concepts were gendered in powerful ways.