Editor's Note

Abstract

 Editor’s Note editor’s note This issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly marks five years since I began service as the journal’s editor. The Fall 2007 issue included an article by Kimberly Jensen,“‘Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign’: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912,” which offered an answer to the question of why, after five unsuccessful efforts, the 1912 campaign for woman suffrage was victorious. Shortly after that time, Kim joined the Quarterly’s EditorialAdvisory Board and agreed to write an essay for our 2009 series on political history, published in honor of the statehood sesquicentennial. The essay she wrote, “Revolutions in the Machinery: Oregon Women and Citizenship in Sesquicentennial Perspective,” called for a revolution in Oregon women’s history. After making such a call, she could hardly refuse my request for her service as guest editor of this special issue on women and citizenship, published in honor of Oregon’s woman suffrage centennial. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with her in all of these endeavors and more. As Kim’s introductory essay and so many of the articles published here make clear,understanding women’s history means understanding the histories of race, class, and sexuality. OHQ’s Editorial Advisory Board has tasked the journal with prioritizing such work, asking that we seek and encourage scholarship that studies groups of people who have yet to receive sustained attentionfromhistorians.Women,particularlythosewhoarenotfromwhite, middle-class backgrounds, fall squarely within that definition. I am happy to report that, in the years since we published Kim’s definitive article on the 1912 campaign, the Quarterly has enjoyed many opportunities to move forward our understanding of women’s history,work that is not culminated but,rather,emphasized by this special issue.Each year,the journal’s advisory board offers the Joel PalmerAward to the author of the best article published the year before, and in 2008, 2009, and 2011, the winners were authors of articles on women’s history, demonstrating that such work does not simply fill holes but also offers significant, highly valued scholarship. In an editor’s note published at the conclusion of our 2009 sesquicentennial series, I remarked on the relationship between historians’ personal selves and their work,writing that although historians’“beliefs will inevitably influence what they research and write . . . they nevertheless maintain the effort for meticulous objectivity.”As an editor, I strive also to maintain that same balance. I have spoken about the importance of women’s history on behalf of OHQ and as a representative of a separate organization,the Oregon  OHQ vol. 113, no. 3 Women’s History Consortium,and my public commitment to women’s history has likely encouraged authors to submit work in that area. Thankfully, that visible support has not inadvertently kept historians of other subjects from also viewing OHQ as a publisher, as evidenced by the journal’s pages and manuscript submissions. The Oregon Historical Quarterly is valuable because it consistently and regularly offers important scholarship on a wide range of topics, people, and eras from Oregon’s vast history. We seek to maintain and enhance that diversity in the years ahead, continuing to bring readers new and important understandings of Oregon’s past. In the future, the Quarterly hopes to advance that understanding not only through publication but also by helping to organize conference sessions and symposia that encourage scholars to develop new analyses of our past.We continue to be grateful for the support of readers and the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) members, volunteers, Board of Trustees, and staff as well as the researchers, archivists, historians, scholars, peer reviewers, and authors who make this work possible. —Eliza E. Canty-Jones ...