Processing Update – October 2023
The SCUA archivists have been hard at work and twelve more collections were made available for research in September.
The finding aids for these, and all, SCUA collections can be accessed through our archival collections database, Archives West and the UO Libraries catalog.
Collections now available for research:
N.L. Berry photograph album, PH203_001
N.L. Berry was an active photographer in Connecticut and Massachusetts during the 1890s. The collection contents date to about 1890-91 and include scenes of people, houses, and waterfronts at Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Ann, Cottage City, Nantucket and Enfield, Connecticut. Formats include cyanotypes and albumens.
Scott Parker collection of Ken Kesey sound recordings, Coll 932
Scott F. Parker is an Oregonian author. Parker collected these materials from the Pacifica Radio Archives while researching his book, Conversations with Ken Kesey (UP Mississippi, 2014). This collection includes sound recordings of interviews with and lectures by American author Ken Kesey from 1965 to 1993.
Northwest Working Press and Herb Everett poster collection, Coll 936
Herb Everett is an Oregonian printer who worked for Northwest Working Press from 1976-1987. The collection includes posters printed and collected by Everett, most of which were produced by Northwest Working Press. Subjects represented in the collection document political activism and social justice organizations and events held in Eugene, Oregon during the 1980s, including labor organization and solidarity, anti-Apartheid advocacy, peace and disarmament, and alternative lifestyles.
Sharon Sherman, Professor Emerita (since 2008) of English and Folklore at the University of Oregon, is a well-known folklorist who demonstrated the importance and pioneered the expertise of folkloristic filmmaking.
Sherman taught public school from 1964 to 1968 in Detroit and surrounding areas. She went to UCLA to pursue an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology, which she was awarded with in 1971. While there, she met her future husband, Steven J. Zibelman, a musician who is credited as a sound- or cameraman on some of her films. Sherman participated in UCLA’s Ethnographic Film Program, which gave her access to equipment and an editing room. She took a class with filmmaker Jorge Preloran and made her first film, the first ever made by an academically-trained folklorist, Tales of the Supernatural, in 1970. Sherman went to Indiana University for her PhD in Folklore; her dissertation, directed by Richard Dorson, was titled, “The Folkloric Film: The Relevance of Film for Understanding Folkloric Events” (1978).
From her appointment as Assistant Professor of English and Folklore in 1976, Sherman spent her career at the University of Oregon. From 1985 through 2006, she served as Director of both the Folklore Program and the Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore.
The subjects of Sherman’s teaching, her books, and her films all overlap and reinforce each other. Her books include Chainsaw Sculptor (1995), Documenting Ourselves (1998, 2006), and Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture (co-edited with Mikel J. Koven, 2007). She published articles on a variety of subjects including folklore pedagogy, reflections on the subjects of her own and other people’s films, and folklore in popular culture such as video games, films, and hip-hop music.
Sherman’s films and videos include Kathleen Ware, Quiltmaker (1979), Passover: A Celebration (1981), Spirits in the Wood (1991), Kid Shoes (2001), and Whatever Happened to Zulay (2012). Sherman was influential (along with Tom Davenport and Daniel Patterson) in establishing the Folkstreams website, “a national preserve of documentary films about roots cultures.”
Tangren Alexander papers, Coll 746
Tangren Alexander (1940-2021) was a lesbian feminist philosopher, professor, writer, and doll photographer. She attended several colleges and received a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Oregon, and became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oregon in 1975. She was a professor of philosophy at Southern Oregon University from 1974 to 2006, where she taught and developed a variety of courses, including cross-disciplinary courses in women’s studies, such as Feminism & Philosophy and Women & Ethics.
In 1976, Alexander came out as a lesbian and began a prolific writing career. She produced a voluminous amount of writing in a variety of forms, both published and unpublished. Her writing has been published in Teaching Philosophy; Hypatia: The Journal of Feminist Philosophy; Sinister Wisdom; WomanSpirit Magazine; The Encyclopedia of Women in World History; and Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy. Under the pseudonym “Pearl Time’sChild,” she was the author of short stories in several of Tee Corrine’s erotic anthologies.
Alexander was active in the lesbian land movement community and the creative women’s community in Southern Oregon. She was a co-founding member of the Southern Oregon Women Writers’ Group, Gourmet Eating Society, and Chorus, which continues to this day.
Having been interested in dolls her entire life, Alexander spent much of her later years photographing dolls and using doll photography to portray feminist stories.
NAACP Portland branch records, Coll 295
Founded on February 12, 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois and others, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) works to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.
Portland’s N.A.A.C.P. branch #1120 was originally founded in 1914 with Dr. J.N. Merriman as its first president and Beatrice Morrow Cannady, editor of African Americannewspaper The Advocate, as its first secretary. The organization successfully fought to repeal Oregon’s exclusion laws, which were abolished in 1926 and 1927; established African Americans in unions; and opposed civic housing policies that excluded African Americans. Other major projects of the Portland branch include desegregation of Portland schools, implementation of Civil Rights legislation, voter registration and education (particularly after the voting age was lowered to 18), and legal redress for those involved in cases of discrimination, particularly in the area of housing and labor.
The Portland NAACP Branch is the oldest continuously chartered branch west of the Mississippi.
Cheryl Reed collection of Paul Ollswang comics, Coll 938
Paul Ollswang (1945-1996) was American underground cartoonist, writer, organizer, radio host, and musician, whose primary working years were spent in Eugene, Oregon. As a cartoonist, he drew for Oregon Cycling and Rain Magazine. He drew the alternative comic book ‘Dreams of a Dog’ at Rip Off Press in 1990. He also contributed to Grateful Dead Comix and created ‘Memories of Doofer’ for Graphic Story Monthly.
Marie J. Andrews photograph albums, Coll 939
Marie J. Andrews was a University of Oregon alumna. The collection includes three photo albums created by Marie J. Andrews depicting University of Oregon student class trips to Hawaii and Alaska on cruise ships, as well as University of Oregon buildings. Materials date 1930-31.
David Ensminger punk flyer collection, Coll 937
David A. Ensminger is a college instructor and the author of books covering both American roots music and punk rock history. The collection includes American punk rock concert flyers. Many flyers may be later reproductions, not original flyers.
Mills Archive of Northwest Folklore student fieldwork collections, UA 416
The Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore was a repository of fieldwork collections and research materials on folklife in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest that functioned as part of the University of Oregon (UO) Folklore and Public Culture Program. Established by the English department in 1966, the repository functioned under the leadership of Director of Folklore and Ethnic Studies, Barre Toelken and was named in memory of UO professor, scholar, and author Randall V. Mills, whose bequest of books and photographs on regional history and folklore were its first acquisitions.
This collection represents the largest and most significant collection assembled and maintained by Archives, the student folklore fieldwork collections. The content of this collection, over 3,000 individual student folklore fieldwork projects, was primarily created by undergraduate University of Oregon students as part of their coursework in UO folklore classes.
Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore collection of stone rubbings, UA 420
This collection inlcudes original stone rubbings (chalk or charcoal on paper) made from gravestones by unknown creators. Some may have been created by Barre Toelken.
Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore reference files, UA 421
The Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore was a repository of fieldwork collections and research materials on folklife in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Materials include two artificial reference and research topical files assembled and maintained by the Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore, a file on sasquatch and a file on xeroxlore.
