By Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano ’24
Jenny Knauss
The posters, fliers, and ephemera in the Libraries’ Femina Collection overflow with remnants of the fight for gender equality waged between the ’60s and ’90s. But even though these rare and original documents are decades old, they are eerily relevant today, according to Jason Nargis, a librarian with the McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives, where these materials reside.
“A lot of this stuff feels strangely contemporary to me,” he said. “These women were dealing with a lot of issues and identity questions that are still with us today in a very real and present and immediate sense.”
A 1973 flyer shares addresses and instructions for those seeking abortions in the Chicago area.
Consider the fight for abortion rights, as seen through the expansive and insightful Jenny Knauss Collection and Jenny Knauss Papers.
Knauss was a UK-born academic who worked in institutions like the Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Ibadan, the History Department at the University of Ghana in Accra, and Roosevelt University in Chicago.
She was also a founding member of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (CWLU), a feminist organization of the 1970s dedicated to fighting gender inequality. Her work often focused on reproductive health, women’s health and abortion services.
During the late 1970s, Knauss worked at Suburban Health Systems Agency in Oak Park, Illinois as an organizer and educator. She trained and informed communities and schools about comprehensive health issues; it was during this time that she “developed into a nationally known and respected authority on women’s health issues,” according to the Libraries’ biography.
This flyer encouraged rallying in Chicago.
The Jenny Knauss Papers include her more personal effects — date books, photographs, diaries, and more that were donated by her partner in 2009 — while the Jenny Knauss Collection contains professional records: her files that deal with her advocacy work with the Jane Collective and with the CWLU.
The Jane Collective, or Jane, was an underground abortion counseling service in Chicago that was operating from 1969 to 1973 before Roe v. Wade passed. The collective consisted largely of women who sought to connect women seeking abortions with doctors willing to provide them. Over time some Janes themselves went on to perform safe abortions after realizing many “doctors” lied about their credentials; no clients over their four years of operations were ever known to have died.
The impact of the Jane collection is wide, and can be felt elsewhere in the holdings of the library, Nargis said. For example, Northwestern also holds the collection of Paula Kamen, a playwright who conducted interviews with women who had gotten abortions through Jane, anonymized their stories, and consolidated them into a play. The Paula Kamen Collection includes interview recordings and information about the play and her process producing it.
Northwestern is fortunate to have so much material pertaining to second wave feminism, Nargis said, especially considering that the Femina Collection was initially started by an unsolicited donation of some feminist serials and ephemera. From that start, the collection grew rapidly.
“There were a couple of Northwestern librarians in the early ’70s who became passionate about documenting second wave feminism. They were activists, so they were involved in the community and activism around Chicago, and they started collecting stuff from when they were out in the world — going to talks and protests and rap sessions,” Nargis explained.
Slowly, Northwestern became recognized as a repository for feminist ephemera, and the McCormick Library itself subscribed to newsletters and journals to additionally bulk up the collection (and remains subscribed to many to this day). “We became a place where people started to send their material relating to second wave feminism,” said Nargis. “Over time, we’ve acquired a number of collections from other places as well, most notably the holdings of the Women’s History Research Center in Berkeley.”
Though there are fewer materials coming to light from the era of second wave feminism, the University still hopes to acquire what it can to fill out its various collections. And, according to Nargis, it feels like we might need these materials now more than ever.
“It’s been kind of an emotional roller coaster since Roe was overturned,” he said. “I’m grateful that we have this material that documents the struggle to gain these rights, and I’m frustrated that we’re in a place where we need that wisdom again, or that resource.”
Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano is a Medill senior