MICHAEL PEICH, President
My involvement with the Ephemera Society of America began when I gave a talk, 19th Century Baseball Ephemera: Early Marketing of the National Pastime, at Ephemera 35. I am a baseball fan (long-suffering Phillies and Cubs), amateur baseball historian, and vintage baseball ephemera and card collector. My interest in African American baseball led to a recent talk at Ephemera 43, African American Baseball: Barnstorming into History. Little did I know that those talks and my service on ESA’s Conference Committee would take me on a path to becoming president of the society.
In my former academic life, I taught American literature, book history and bookmaking. Having printed numerous pieces of poetry ephemera and books, I wish I had directed my students to pursue ephemera studies. Now I can make amends and encourage student ephemera research through ESA’s Emerging Scholars program. The Board and I will do our best to encourage and expand ephemera research, appreciation, and conversations. I look forward to serving as President.
JAMES ARSENAULT
I’ve been a rare book dealer since 1988 and from the beginning ephemera has been part and parcel of my inventory. I’ve been a member of the Ephemera Society since the 1990s and have exhibited at the Society’s annual ephemera fair every year since that time. The wonders and possibilities of ephemera continue to delight and educate me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to serve on the board to help continue to bring the endlessly interesting world of ephemera to as wide an audience as possible.
PAUL ERICKSON
I’ve been the Director of the William Clements Library at the University of Michigan since 2020, and before that spent close to 10 years working at the American Antiquarian Society. So I’ve been around wonderful ephemera collections for quite a while, and I’ve gotten to see first-hand the creative uses that scholars can make of ephemera collections when they’re told they exist. My doctoral research in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin relied heavily on cheap pamphlet fiction and printed ephemera on 19th-century U.S. urban life. I’ve served several other scholarly organizations in various capacities, including the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and I look forward to helping the ESA connect with scholars in related fields.
BARBARA LOE
I am a retired regional sales manager from 3M and as part of my position there I organized a large number of meetings and conferences, so when I first started working with the board the conference position seemed like a natural fit.
I’ve been a collector and dealer since the 1990s and have served as the ESA conference chair for the last 12 years. I served as a board member for two terms starting in 2008. We’ve focused on expanding the conference to more presentations around a specific theme each year and have worked to expand our presenters to include authors, academics, and topic specialists. In the last couple of years, we’ve added virtual conferences with accompanying virtual fairs to give our members more value and to provide activities throughout the year. I want to focus on more ways to bring new and younger members to our organization.
MARI NAKAHARA
I am a curator and librarian, and hold a Ph.D. in architectural history and design, and a graduate degree in library and information science. My enthusiasm to learn about archives led me to intern at Columbia University’s Avery Architectural Archive as well as the Museum of Modern Art in the 1990s. Then, I finally emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 2000.
I have worked on various types of collections at multiple institutions, such as the New York Public Library, the Skyscraper Museum, the Octagon Museum, and the Library of Congress. I hope my experience for the last few decades would contribute to the Society’s needs.
REBECCA PARMER
As the director of the Winterthur Library, an independent research library for the study of American art, design, and culture, I’ve had the opportunity to shape, grow, and share our extraordinary, expansive ephemera collections with a global community of students, scholars, and curious thinkers.
I’m excited by the ways in which ephemera can surface hidden histories, offering new ways of exploring and understanding the past, and by the innovative and emerging research approaches scholars bring to these materials. Through my work on the board of the Ephemera Society, I look forward to connecting new audiences to the wide world of possibilities in ephemera through outreach, programs, and research opportunities.”
ERIKA PIOLA
As Curator of Graphic Arts and Director of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I have had the pleasure to acquire, research, catalog, make presentations, and write about ephemera in the Library’s collection for over twenty years. Within the last decade, my enthusiasm for these “transient documents of everyday life” grew even more through my management of the digital project 18th-and 19th-Century Ephemera, my co-curation of the exhibition Remnants of Everyday Life: Ephemera in the Workplace, Street, and Home, and my collaboration with the Ephemera Society of America in organizing the conference Unmediated History: The Scholarly Study of 19th-Century Ephemera.
As an Ephemera Society Board member, I hope to further spread the word about the work of the Society and advocate for the import and insightful joy of ephemera, sometimes small in size but always expansive in meaning.
JEREMY ROWE
Dr. Jeremy Rowe has collected, researched, and written about 19th and early 20th century photographs for over forty years, including Arizona Photographers 1850 – 1920: A History and Directory, Arizona Real Photo Postcards: A History and Portfolio, and Arizona Stereographs 1865 – 1930, and numerous publications on photographic history. He serves on boards of the Daguerreian Society, The Ephemera Society of America, Daniel Nagrin Theatre Film & Dance Foundation Inc., and the National Stereoscopic Association.
He was a Fulbright Specialist at the National Museum of Bosnia Herzegovina and works with the Library of Congress on projects including the Nagrin and National Stereoscopic Research Collections and research Fellowships.
Jeremy is an Emeritus Faculty member at Arizona State University and Senior Research Scientist at New York University.
BRUCE SHYER
Bruce Shyer is a retired attorney who practiced in San Francisco. He is a Life Member of ESA who has served the longest continuous period on its Board of Directors, (approximately 14 years), three as Vice-President and three as President. His collecting interests include bookselling and art deco ephemera. Bruce has frequently exhibited ephemera from his collection and has written pieces for the Society’s Journal and Conference keepksakes. In 2019, he received the Society’s Reward of Merit for outstanding service. In 2023, he was given the Society’s highest honor, the Maurice Richards Award, created to recognize outstanding achievement in the world of ephemera and ephemera studies.
JENNIFER SOPKO
I am a Pittsburgh-based writer and historian with a love of local history. For more than 20 years I’ve covered Western Pennsylvania communities and history as a freelance writer, journalist and editor for local newspapers, Westmoreland History magazine, and other publications.
My research specialty – and chief ephemera interest – is amusement parks, which I’ve documented through public presentations, exhibits, digital media, and the written word. I am the author of Idlewild: History and Memories of Pennsylvania’s Oldest Amusement Park and my book-in-progress will chronicle lost amusement parks across Western Pennsylvania.
I am active in several historical organizations with robust ephemera archives, including the National Amusement Park Historical Association, the Ligonier Valley Rail Road Association, and the Westmoreland Historical Society. Ephemera has become a staple of my historical research and touches my personal life through my lifelong greeting card collection and maintenance of my dad’s Pittsburgh Pirates baseball card collection.
ELIZABETH SVENDSEN
I am an antiquarian book dealer with an academic background in nineteenth-century American social and cultural history. The scope of my interest in ephemera grows with each passing year (the more I learn, the more there is to appreciate), but I am particularly fond of the ephemera of places — travel brochures, real estate promotional materials, souvenir view books, and the like — and materials related to American religious movements, popular entertainment, health crazes, and cons and frauds.
I am excited to be able to help the organization grow and spread our passion for these fascinating tidbits of the past to an ever-widening audience.
MATTHEW WITTMAN
Through my work as a curator and historian of popular entertainment, I have dealt with a wide range of ephemera, ranging from postcards and playbills to banknotes. In the context of my position as Curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection, I am actively involved in the cataloging and collecting of theatrical ephemera. I have written two books on the history of the American circus and contributed essays on a printing history, numismatics, and theater history to a number of different publications. I curated an exhibition this fall at Houghton Library about immigration and the American stage that is comprised almost exclusively of ephemera, some of which has been acquired at ESA fairs of recent years. With this background in writing and thinking about ephemera, I know that I can contribute to the growth and development of the ESA as the organization looks to its future.
https://library.harvard.edu/collections/harvard-theatre-collection
MARY BETH MALMSHEIMER
Administrative Director
As the Administrative Director of our Society, Mary Beth manages the day-to-day activities of running the organization. She handles membership, publication design, layout and distribution, member inquiries and assistance, annual conference and fair details, as well as numerous other responsibilities.
If you have any questions or require assistance, she can be reached at: info@ephemerasociety.org
DIANE DeBLOIS
Editor, The Ephemera Journal
Diane is one of the Society’s founding members, and has attended every fair and conference.
She has created articles and talks nationally and internationally, and designed symposia in partnership with the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collection Librarians, the Rare Book and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Strong Museum of Play, the American Antiquarian Society, the Clements Library, Winterthur Library and Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, The Library Company of Philadelphia. She and partner Robert Dalton Harris, under the name aGatherin’, specialize in researching and selling ephemera, with a specialty in the history of communication. aGatherin’ has appraised large archives for The Library of Congress, New York State Library, Fashion Institute of Technology, Smithsonian National Postal Museum and others. They were jointly awarded our Maurice Rickards Award in 2008, and received the American Philatelic Society’s Luff Award for excellence in philatelic research in 2016.
Diane collects electric toasters and related ephemera. She is especially attracted by the manuscript record of everyday life.