Bohemians West
View recording of this event on YouTube: Lane County History Museum
History Pub presents “Bohemians West: Free Love, Family and Radicals in Twentieth Century America” featuring Sherry Smith:
Monday, October 12
7:00–9:00 PM
Live via Zoom (RSVP Only)
Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP by October 12, 5:00 PM, and we’ll contact you with event details including information on how to join us via Zoom. (Information submitted in the form below will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the October 12 event.) This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, Viking Braggot Company, and Lane County Cultural Coalition.
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This event has passed. RSVPs are closed. See link above to view recording.
Free Love
Portland’s Charles Erskine Scott Wood and his lover Sara Bard Field stood in the thick of a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America in the 1910s. They sought change not only in labor picket lines and at woman suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. This presentation explores the passionate and tumultuous relationship between Erskine and Sara that spanned decades. Self-described pioneers in free love, the pair exchanged hundreds of letters that charted a new kind of romantic relationship while simultaneously uncovering contradictions with their deeply engaged political lives and ideals. Their story provides a profoundly personal look at a dynamic, and amazingly relevant, period in American history.
About the Speaker
Sherry L. Smith is a University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. A historian of the American West and Native America, she is the former co-director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and a former president of the Western History Association. Smith’s award-winning books include Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power (2012) and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940 (2000), both published by Oxford University Press. Her newest book, Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth Century America, has just been released, in 2020. She lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California.