Some people in the world have a town square, others their local cafe or pub, philosophes had their salons -- but for the best in intellectual stimulation, exchange of ideas and the most interesting reading in the world lucky historians like me have archives. And one of the best in the universe is the Historical Collections & Archives at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
Yesterday I was able to visit this marvelous place, tucked in the Marquam Hill campus (and yes, Sara Marquam Hill, M.D. was the daughter of Philip Marquam, whose real estate it once was) in the Old Library building. I've been here many times and conducted most all of my research for the biography of Esther Lovejoy, but came to go through some files in the Esther Lovejoy Collections 2001-004 and 2011-011 and to review the stunning collection of her photographs.
But what also makes these visits of immense value to me as a scholar is that archivists Sara Piasecki and Karen Peterson engage in conversations with me about Lovejoy and her history (and just who might be in those photographs), the nature of history itself (can we write history at all without making some interpretive conclusions that will be challenged someday -- and isn't that the excitement of studying and producing history?) and the future of the book and electronic publishing .
Did I mention that they did all of this while getting additional boxes for me, working with other patrons, welcoming interested visitors, helping patrons and others who phoned in and all of the other vital work they completed yesterday?
I celebrate them for making HC&A this incredible place. You're the greatest Sara and Karen!
Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism
Mobilizing Minerva
Women and Transnational Activism
About Me
- Kimberly Jensen
- Kimberly Jensen received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in women’s and U.S. history and teaches history and gender studies at Western Oregon University. She is the author of Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (University of Washington Press, 2012), Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and coeditor, with Erika Kuhlman, of Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters, 2010). She is working on a new book project tentatively titled “Civic Borderlands: Oregon Women’s Claims to Citizenship and Civil Liberties, 1913-1924”