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8/19 TALK: LGBTQ+ History in Southern Oregon with SOU’s Anna Sloan
August 19, 2025 @ 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Free
Out in the Valley: Southern Oregon LGBTQ+ Histories
Using historical objects, documents, and photographs from the SOHS Collection as “breadcrumbs”, Dr. Anna Sloan will explore expressions of LGBTQ+ life, identity, community, and resilience in Southern Oregon over the past 150+ years. Learn how the western frontier made space for some settlers’ alternative gender and sexual identities, while simultaneously erasing Indigenous expressions of the same. Explore how changing social mores of the early 20th century affected peoples’ lives and livelihoods. Hear more recent stories of local LGBTQ+ community-building, meaning-making, artistry, and resilience, even in the face of discrimination and violence. Sloan will also share the latest updates from SOHS on efforts to integrate more of these stories into the permanent collection — and why this task is as challenging as it is important.
Presenter Bio: Anna Sloan, PhD (she/her/hers) is the Curator of Collections for the Southern Oregon Historical Society (SOHS), and a Research Archaeologist with the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA). She received her PhD in Anthropology (Archaeology) and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Oregon in 2021. Histories of gender, sexuality, and social identity were the focus of her academic studies, and Anna is excited to bring this research focus to her work in southern Oregon. Anna’s favorite part of her job is connecting communities with their histories through the objects that reflect their lived experiences — from the smallest of pottery sherds, to the largest of wagon wheels. She lives in Ashland with her family and a growing menagerie of four-legged friends.
