Tuesday, December 5
| 10:00 am-12:00 pm | "Oregon Women – Citizenship, Civil Liberties and the Surveillance State from 1913-1922 ," Kimberly Jensen [Ann Boss], Kaneko Auditorium 
Dr. Kimberly Jensen, Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University, will discuss research from her forthcoming book Oregon’s Others: Gender, Civil Liberties, and the Surveillance State in the Early Twentieth Century to be published in Spring 2024 by the University of Washington Press. First World War and postwar campaigns for 100% Americanism and loyalty, combined with Oregon’s consequential eugenics movement, defined an intense period of surveillance and scrutiny for internal enemy others and profound challenges to civil liberties. Campaigns for loyalty and eugenic sterilization sharpened concepts of loyal supporters versus enemy opponents, who was a productive citizen and who was an “unfit,” “alien,” or dangerous “other.” The war and eugenic policies also expanded and deepened surveillance projects and tools for increased scrutiny in the service of identifying and punishing internal enemies. But some Oregonians, including women and gender nonconforming people, endured and resisted these restrictions. Their persistence and their resistance became part of expanding movements for civil liberties and human rights and a citizenship of dissent that reverberates in our own day. Jensen will provide an overview of Oregon’s wartime loyalty campaigns and early twentieth century eugenics movement and will then focus on two case studies from her research. The first case highlights the wartime registration of non-citizen German residents in the state as “enemy aliens,” including women born in the U.S. who, because of federal citizenship legislation then in force, lost their U.S. citizenship when they married German citizen men. In the second case, Oregon became the model for other states in a “social hygiene” crusade, including Oregon’s first-in-the-nation detention home for women with sexually transmitted infections, during the World War. Policymakers targeted women, but not men, and they incarcerated women without due process protections. Surveillance and civil liberties violations in “health” policies extended far past the crisis of wartime. Jensen will profile how some Oregonians resisted these policies in significant ways that are vital to our history. Dr. Kimberly Jensen received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in women’s and U.S. History and she is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University. Jensen 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 co-editor, with Erika Kuhlman, of Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (Republic of Letters, 2010). She has published numerous articles and book chapters on women and war, and gender, citizenship and civil liberties. Jensen is the President of the Oregon’s Women’s History Consortium and a member of the editorial and executive boards of the Oregon Encyclopedia. |
| 1:00 pm-3:00 pm | "Welcome to the ICL Writing Potpourri!," Betty Kasoff, Rebecca Miller-Moe, Jan Petroski, Bob Muir, Chris Duval, Kasia Quillinan, Vernelle Judy, Lois Rosen [Lois Rosen], Kaneko Auditorium
Potpourri is the French name for a stew with a wide variety of fragrant ingredients. Today’s mix of presenters includes ICL Writing Group Members. We create new work from prompts the writers are free to follow or ignore. We share new pieces by reading aloud with an option to pass. Our positive comments focus only on what is strong or memorable in the writing, giving the writer a chance to learn what’s working well. The group has been fun, supportive, and full of terrific poems and prose. |
Thursday, December 7
| 10:00 am-12:00 pm | "Up Close & Personal," Don Beckman, Helen Beckman, Vicki McLean [Don Gallagher], Kaneko Auditorium
ICL is made up of a very interesting group of folks with fascinating backgrounds. In this session which has become an ICL tradition, we will get to know a few of them a little better, as we ask them to share an interesting story from their family, their work experience, or world experience. |
| 12:00 pm-2:00 pm | "Tis the Season Luncheon and Elections," [Social Services], Cat Cavern Reservations are being taken until November 30th. Plus Incidental music from GwenEllyn’s Audio Gallery and a short Business Meeting. |
