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History

The Department of History endeavors to cultivate a critical understanding of past and present human societies that will help students to become informed, thoughtful and engaged participants in the world. By offering our students the opportunity to discover historical inquiry as a meaningful part of their humanistic formation, history contributes directly to the highest intellectual mission of the college.

Requirements & Courses

Goals for Majors in History

The Department of History at Smith College endeavors to cultivate a critical understanding of past and present human societies that will help students to become informed, thoughtful and engaged participants in the world. By offering our students the opportunity to discover historical inquiry as a meaningful part of their humanistic formation, history contributes directly to the highest intellectual mission of the college.

The study of history at Smith thus aims to prepare students to:

  • Locate, analyze, and craft their own understandings of the past from a wide range of primary sources.
  • Place such analyses in the context of historical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

These goals are achieved through developing knowledge and skills specific to the historical profession and humanistic scholarship. Students majoring in history are expected to:

  • Distinguish between primary and secondary sources and read them closely and critically.
  • Be familiar with major interpretative frameworks in the discipline of history and understand theoretical and methodological issues in historical debate.
  • Acquire experience in supervised and independent research.
  • Develop analytical and writing skills necessary for research and for presenting findings effectively.

The history curriculum ultimately helps students understand more clearly not only their place in contemporary society but also relationships between longer-term political, social, economic, intellectual and cultural currents in our increasingly globalized world.

Students majoring in history demonstrate their skills and knowledge in the following ways:

  1. Taking HST 150 and satisfying the history major’s distribution requirements (geographical, chronological and thematic).
  2. Taking a research seminar and writing a major research essay (or completing a major semester-long research project that may include both writing and digital components), which engages both primary and secondary sources and demonstrates command of major interpretative frameworks in history.
  3. Honors students write a thesis based on independent research in primary and secondary sources and defend it publicly.

History Major

Requirements

Eleven courses

  1. HST 150
  2. Five courses in a single field of emphasis: Antiquity; Islamic Middle East; East Asia; Europe, 300–1650; Europe since 1650; Africa; Latin America; United States; Women’s History; Comparative Colonialism; World History; or a field of emphasis of the student's own design, which should consist of courses related chronologically, geographically, methodologically or thematically and must be approved by an adviser.
    • At least one course must be a Smith history seminar
    • Up to two courses may be historically oriented courses at the 200 level or above in other disciplines approved by the student’s adviser
  3. Five additional courses, of which four must be in two fields distinct from the field of emphasis.
  4. Geographic breadth: among the courses counting toward the major, there must be at least one course focusing on three different geographic regions: Africa, East Asia and Central Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and South Asia, North America.
Major Requirement Details
  • No more than three courses taken at the 100 level may count toward the major.
  • At least six of the eleven required courses shall normally be taken at Smith.
  • Courses cross-listed in this history department section of the catalogue count as history courses toward all requirements.
  • AP courses cannot be used to fulfill any major requirement.
  • The S/U grading option is not allowed for courses fulfilling the major requirement.
  • A reading knowledge of foreign languages is highly desirable and is especially recommended for students planning a major in history.

Honors

Please consult the director of honors or the departmental website for specific requirements and application procedures.

History Minor

Requirements

Five semester courses

  1. At least three of the five courses must be related chronologically, geographically, methodologically or thematically.
  2. At least three of the courses will normally be taken at Smith.

The S/U grading option is not allowed for courses counting toward the minor.

Course Information

History courses at the 100- and 200-level are open to all students unless otherwise indicated. Admission to seminars (300-level) assumes prior preparation in the field and is by permission of the instructor.

In certain cases, students may enroll in colloquia for seminar credit with permission of the instructor.

HST 224, HST 225 and HST 226 form an introductory sequence in medieval history.

HST 265, HST 266 and HST 267 form an introductory sequence in United States history.

Courses

HST 111 A Global History of Madness (4 Credits)

This survey provides students with an introduction to how madness has been understood and experienced over time and across a variety of spaces. The first portion of the course provides historical background to early descriptions of mental unrest and the range of ways in which it was depicted. The second part looks at mental institutions from across the world, highlighting how different groups believed madness was best conceptualized, contained, and cured. And the last part of the course looks at current controversies and developments in the world of mental health, including deinstitutionalization, biological treatments, and the uneven burdens of mental distress. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 120 Modern East Asia (4 Credits)

This introductory course looks comparatively at the histories of China, Japan and Korea from the late 18th century to the present. It examines the struggles of these countries to preserve or regain their independence and establish national identities in a rapidly emerging and often violent modern world order. Although each of these countries has its own distinctive identity, their overlapping histories (and dilemmas) give the region a coherent identity. The class also looks at how individuals respond to and are shaped by larger historical movements. {H}

Fall

HST 150 The Historian's Craft (4 Credits)

This course serves as an introduction to the study of History and to what historians do. It is a requirement for the History major. At the root of this course is the question of what is history and what it means to study history. Key questions driving the course are: Is history simply the study of the past? What is the past’s connection to the present? Is it even necessary to make such connections to the present and what is lost and gained in making such connections? Normally to be taken during a student's first or second year. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring

HST 157 Africa and the Making of the Modern World (4 Credits)

Often seen as peripheral to the modern world, Africa and African peoples are often ignored in both popular and scholarly world histories traversing the last several centuries. This course aims to turn these narratives on their head by not only injecting African histories into world historical narratives, but by using these histories to detail Africa’s centrality to understanding the world. In doing so, the course examines the development of and African experiences with the varying forms of capitalism and trade that developed out of both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean trade networks, the genealogical roots of European imperialism and the ways in which African peoples navigated, resisted and transformed these broader global phenomena in the construction of the world around them. This course is open to all students and assumes no prior knowledge. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 201 The Silk Road and Premodern Eurasia (4 Credits)

An introduction to major developments and interactions among people in Europe and Asia before modernity. The Silk Roads, long distance networks that allowed people, goods, technology, religious beliefs and other ideas to travel between China, India and Rome/Mediterranean, and the many points in between, developed against the backdrop of the rise and fall of steppe nomadic empires in Inner Asia. We examine these as interrelated phenomena that shaped Eurasian encounters to the rise of the world-conquering Mongols and the journey of Marco Polo. Topics include: horses, Silk and Steppe routes, Scythians and Huns, Han China and Rome, Byzantium, Buddhism, Christianity and other universal religions, Arabs and the rise of Islam, Turks, Mongol Empire, and medieval European trade, geography and travel. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Spring

HST 202 Ancient Greece (4 Credits)

A survey of the history of the ancient Greeks during their most formative period, from the end of the Bronze Age to the end of the Classical Age. The class examines the relationship between mythology, archaeology and historical memory; the evolution of the city-state; games and oracles; colonization, warfare and tyranny; city-states Sparta and Athens and their respective pursuits of social justice; wars with Persia; cultural interactions with non-Greeks; Athens' naval empire and its invention of Democracy; family and women; traditional religions and forms of new wisdom; and the trial and death of Socrates in 399 B.C. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 203 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World (4 Credits)

The career and conquests of Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.) wrought far-reaching consequences for many in Europe, Asia and Africa. In the ensuing Hellenistic (Greek-oriented) commonwealth that spanned the Mediterranean, Middle East, Central Asia and India, Greco-Macedonians interacted with Egyptians, Babylonians, Jews, Iranians, Indians and Romans in ways that galvanized ideas and institutions such as the classical city as ideal community, cult of divine kings and queens, "fusion" literatures, mythologies and artistic canons and also provoked nativist responses such as the Maccabean revolt. Main topics include Greeks and "barbarians," Alexander and his legacies, Hellenism as ideal and practice, conquerors and natives, kings and cities/regions, Greek science and philosophies, old and new gods. This course provides context for understanding early Christianity, Judaism and the rise of Rome. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Spring, Variable

HST 204 The Roman Republic (4 Credits)

A survey of the history of the Roman people as Rome developed from a village in central Italy to the capital of a vast Mediterranean empire of 50 million people. The course traces Rome’s early rise through mythology and archaeology and follows developments from Monarchy to the end of the Republic, including the Struggle of the Orders, conquests and citizenship, wars with Carthage, encounters with local cultures in North Africa, Gaul and the Greek East, challenges of expansion and empire, rich versus poor, political corruption and the Civil Wars of the Late Republic. The class also studie the family, slavery, traditional and new religions, and other aspects of Roman culture and society. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 205 The Roman Empire (4 Credits)

The history of the Romans and other mediterranean peoples from the first to the early fifth centuries A.D. With Emperor Augustus, the traditional Republican form of rule was reshaped to accommodate the personal rule of an emperor that governed a multiethnic empire of 50 million successfully for several centuries. Imperial Rome represents the paradigmatic classical empire that many later empires sought to emulate. The class traces how this complex imperial society evolved to meet different challenges. Topics include: the emperor and historical writings, corruption of power, bread and circuses, assimilation and revolts, the Jewish war, universal and local religions, early Christianity, Late Antiquity, migrations and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. This course offers context for understanding the history of Christianity, Judaism and the early Middle Ages. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 206hm Colloquium: Topics in Ancient History-Diseases, Health and Medicine in the Ancient World (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the history of the culture and history of the ancient Mediterranean world through the lens provided by Greek and Roman medical writers. The Greek Enlightenment in the sixth century B.C. ushered in a "scientific" approach to healing that continued to evolve throughout antiquity even as traditional methods retained their importance. Specific themes highlighted in this course include interactions between traditional temple healing, the magical arts and scientific medicine; the emergence of an epidemiology based largely on environmental factors; women as health practitioners; women's bodies in ancient medical theorizing and practice; and medicine and the ancient educational system. No previous background needed and first-year students are welcome. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 207 Colloquium: Writing about Twentieth-Century Wars in Asia (4 Credits)

How is historical memory made—and lost? Students in this course reflect upon and intervene in this process as they consider how the major wars of the mid-twentieth century have been remembered or forgotten in the public sphere. The focus is on wars in Asia, most notably the Asia-Pacific theater of World War II followed by the supposedly “forgotten” war in Korea. Yet public knowledge about these wars is extremely limited in the United States. At the same time, war memories, particularly those surrounding World War II, are more contentious than ever across East Asia today. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Spring, Variable

HST 208/ MES 208 Introduction to the History of the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as HST 208 and MES 208. This course examines the history of the modern Middle East from a global perspective. How have gender, economy, ecology and religion shaped Middle Eastern empires and nation-states within a broader world? The course begins with transformations in Egypt, Iran and the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and World War I. Next, it turns to experiences of colonialism, the rise of independent nation-states and the birth of new political movements. Students learn to appreciate the diversity of the region’s cultures, languages and peoples and to critically assess how the Middle East has been imagined from without and within. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 213 History of Modern China (4 Credits)

This course examines the history of China, primarily from the 18th century until today. The course covers topics ranging from the expansion of the Qing, the transition from empire to nation, and economic development and environmental disasters in the PRC. The readings and lectures establish a framework of critical analysis for issues of both historical and contemporary importance. Having completed the course, students are expected not only to understand the major events and themes in the history of Modern China, but also to be aware of the ways in which contemporary politics make use of different historical narratives. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 217 World War Two in East Asia: History and Memory (4 Credits)

Examination of the factors leading to the war in Asia, the nature of the conflict and the legacy of the war for all those involved. Topics include Japan’s seizure of Korea, the invasion of China, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the war in the Pacific, the racial dimensions of the Japanese empire, the comfort women, biological warfare, the dropping of the atomic bombs and the complicated relationship between history and memory. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 222pp Colloquium: Topics in Japanese History-The Place of Protest in Japan (4 Credits)

Histories of social conflict, protest and revolution in early modern and modern Japan. In the early modern period (1600–1867), peasant resistance and protest, urban uprisings, popular culture, “world-renewal” movements and the restorationist activism of the Tokugawa period. In the modern period, the incipient democratic movements and the new millenarian religions of the Meiji era (1868–1912), radical leftist activism, mass protest and an emerging labor movement in the Taisho era (1912–26), anti-imperialist movements in China during the prewar years and finally, a range of citizens’ movements in the postwar decades. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 223at Colloquium: Topics on Women and Gender in Japanese History-Ancient Times to the 19th Century (4 Credits)

The dramatic transformation in gender relations is a key feature of Japan’s premodern history. How Japanese women and men have constructed norms of behavior in different historical periods, how gender differences were institutionalized in social structures and practices, and how these norms and institutions changed over time. The gendered experiences of women and men from different classes from approximately the seventh through the 19th centuries. Consonant with current developments in gender history, exploration of variables such as class, religion and political context that have affected women’s and men’s lives. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 224 History of the Early Middle Ages (4 Credits)

This survey course examines Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the early medieval era, starting with the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Students will study the turbulent nature of political and societal boundaries and the rise of Christianity in Europe before 900 AD, as well as the emergence of Islam as a religion and political power and its influence on the medieval European and Byzantine worlds. Students will engage in the examination and discussion of early medieval notions of kinship, race, law and justice, popular piety and political power. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 225 Making of the Medieval World, 1000–1350 (4 Credits)

This survey course examines Europe, the Mediterranean world, from the late 10th century to the 14th, considered the height of the medieval world. Students study the interactions between peoples and societies in the medieval world - from the emergence of new conceptions of sovereignty, popular religion and the Crusades, the university, and Arthurian literature, to the restructuring of society in the calamitous century of the Mortalitas Magnas. Students engage in discussions about the notions of conquest and reconquest, race, law and justice, medieval love and chivalry, and the intersection of political and religious authority. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 226 Renaissance and Reformation? Europe in the Late Middle Ages: Society, Culture and Politics From (4 Credits)

Did radical societal shifts really take place in Europe between 1300 and 1600, as the terms “Renaissance” and “Reformation” imply? Students will use this question to frame their learning in this survey course, studying the period that saw the aftermath of the Black Death, the fragmentation of Christianity, the growing power of monarchs, the advent of the printing press, and the beginnings of the age of European Imperialism. Students will examine and discuss humanism, witch hunts, popular piety and heresy, the advent of the Italian city-state, and the intersection of politics and science. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 227mm Colloquium: Topics in Medieval European History-Magic in the Middle Ages (4 Credits)

The course uses magic as a case study for exploring cultural transmission in the Middle Ages. The course examines Germanic and Greco-Roman occult traditions, and the way in which the medieval synthesis of these cultures effects understandings of the occult. The course follows the influence of the Arabic and Hebrew influences on western occultism of the High Middle Ages, and flowering of the Renaissance magical tradition. The course challenges and reshapes some of our basic understandings about Medieval society. It problematizes modern division between science, magic and religion to illustrate how occult beliefs were part of wider religious experiences. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 228/ JUD 228 The Jew in the Medieval World (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 228 and HST 228. How does the medieval period influence or complicate contemporary understandings of race, religious cooperation and rivalry, and constructions of otherness?  Explores intellectual and cultural cross-pollination in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Europe, including crises reflected in disputations, crusades, exile and murder. Open to students at all levels. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 229 Colloquium: A World Before Race?: Ethnicity, Culture and Difference in the Middle Ages (4 Credits)

Twenty-first century scholars argue that race is a constructed social identity that began to coalesce around the seventeenth century. But were they right? In this course, we will look to the Middle Ages to challenge the consensus that racial constructions were a byproduct of modernity. Does race function differently between the world of Latin Christendom and that of the dar al-Islam? What are the advantages and dangers of using the prism of race to analyze ethnic, cultural and religious differences in this medieval period? What does studying race in the Middle Ages teach us about contemporary conceptions of race? Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 233 The Science of Sex (4 Credits)

This lecture course surveys the history of sex or sexology from the late 1800s to the present day. The course explores the global referents used to create the categories of sexology—the ways in which racialized, colonized, and otherwise marginalized groups were studied and exploited to create knowledge about sexuality. The course also explores how this knowledge was popularized, especially in popular fictional texts. How have scientists studied sex and constructed sexual selves, and how has this changed over time? Whose sex was studied by scientists? How can we use this history to understand sex today? Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}{S}

Spring, Variable

HST 234 Colloquium: Global Africa (4 Credits)

This course interrogates how scholars have engaged the "transnational" and "global" in African history. In doing so, the course explores the complex networks of identities, loyalties, and attachments forged by diverse groups of African peoples in their attempts to live within and transcend the boundaries of the modern nation-state. As a result, over the course of the semester, the class will investigate issues of trade, nationality, citizenship, race, and identity as it queries the many ways in which Africans have shaped (and reshaped) their views of themselves and communities over seemingly vast distances in time and space. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 235 Independent Africa: A Social and Cultural History (4 Credits)

This course provides a general, introductory survey of African social and cultural history from approximately the end of World War II to the present. In doing so, the course will look beyond the formal political maneuvering of elite figures, focusing instead on the many and competing ways in which a broad array of African actors engaged the changing political and social contexts in which they lived. As such, key themes of the course such as anticolonialism, decolonization, development, and HIV/AIDS will serve as lenses into a range of perspectives on life in an independent Africa. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 236 World History 1000-2000: The European Millennium? (4 Credits)

A critical investigation of a thousand years of globalization, centering on China, Persia, and Britain. How did Europe, a mere cape of Asia, come to dominate much of the planet politically and culturally? Ventures by Vikings, Crusaders, conquistadors, missionaries, traders, settlers, revolutionaries, and feminists. How distinctive forms of family, state, religion, and economy participated in and grew out of imperialism. Open to all students. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 237/ MES 237 Colloquium: Mobility and Migration in the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as MES 237 and HST 237. The history of the modern Middle East is a story of border-crossing as well as border-making. From 19th century immigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the Americas, to today's migrant laborers in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf, the region has been forged by those who move within and beyond national borders. How have forces of gender, class, and ethnicity shaped these journeys? This course examines the gendered processes of movement and migration--voluntary and involuntary--that have shaped the modern Middle East from the 19th century to the present. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 238cm Colloquium: Topics in World History-Consumer Goods in the History and Practice of Medicine (4 Credits)

This course investigates the interplay of consumerism and medicine through a series of medical objects, both in the present day and in the past. Medicine and capitalism are strongly linked in history, and this course uses objects to tease apart their relationship, paying special attention to the identity of patients and the provenance of objects. Do consumer goods further or inhibit the goals of medicine? Can medical objects advance the agency of marginalized people? And what makes something medical, anyway? Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {H}{S}

Spring, Variable

HST 238pc Colloquium: Topics in World History-The History and Psychology of Clothing (4 Credits)

The course draws on materials from many fields beyond psychology: fashion studies, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of science. As a broad, interdisciplinary survey, the course arms students with an array of means by which to analyze clothing—both today and in the past. What led early psychologists to engage with the question of dress? How did these psychologists think about clothes? And why is fashion no longer a serious topic, but a shallow discussion in popular culture? The class engages with these questions and more as it focuses on the interaction of dress and psychology over the last 150 years. Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {H}{S}

Spring, Variable

HST 239 Imperial Russia, 1650–1917 (4 Credits)

The emergence, expansion and maintenance of the Russian Empire to 1929. The dynamics of pan-imperial institutions and processes (imperial dynasty, peasantry, nobility, intelligentsia, revolutionary movement), as well as the development of the multitude of nations and ethnic groups conquered by or included into the empire. Focus on how the multinational Russian empire dealt with pressures of modernization (nationalist challenges in particular), internal instability and external threats. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 240 Colloquium: Stalin and Stalinism (4 Credits)

Joseph Stalin created a particular type of society in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Stalinism became a phenomenon that influenced the development of the former Soviet Union and the Communist movement worldwide. This course covers the period on the eve of and during the Russian Revolution, Stalinist transformation of the USSR in the 1930s, WWII and the onset of the Cold War. We consider several questions about Stalinism: Was it a result of Communist ideology or a deviation? Did it enjoy any social support? To what extent was it a product of larger social forces and in what degree was it shaped by Stalin’s own personality? Did it have total control over the people’s lives? Why hasn’t there been a de-Stalinization similar to de-Nazification? How is Stalinism remembered? Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 241 Soviet Union in the Cold War (4 Credits)

Focuses on the history of the Soviet Union during the "greater Cold War," that is, between World War II and the disintegration of the USSR. Touches on foreign policy developments, but the main focus is on the social, political and economic processes, and cultural developments inside the USSR itself. Explores Soviet history in the second half of the 20th century through historical works and a range of primary sources. Topics include the post-war reconstruction, rise of the military-industrial complex, education, popular culture and dissent. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 243 Colloquium: Reconstructing Historical Communities (4 Credits)

How much can historians learn about the daily lives of the mass of the population in the past? Can a people’s history recapture the thoughts and deeds of subjects as well as rulers? Critical examination of attempts at total history from below for selected English and French locales. The class re-creates families, congregations, guilds and factions in a German town amid the religious controversy and political revolution of the 1840s. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 244/ MES 244 Colloquium:Thinking Revolution: Histories of Revolt in the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as MES 244 and HST 244. How could we theorize revolution from the MENA region? How might we connect older histories and vocabularies of social change to recent events in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia? In the first part of this course, students engage prominent theories of revolution generated within EuroAmerican and MENA contexts. Next, we consider diverse theories of social change generated within key moments in the history of the modern Middle East, from Ottoman constitution in 1876 to postcolonial revolts in Oman, Yemen, and Algeria. Finally, we consider the 2011 Arab spring within this longer history of social change in the region. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 246 Colloquium: Memory and History (4 Credits)

Contemporary debates among European historians, artists and citizens over the place of memory in political and social history. The effectiveness of a range of representational practices from the historical monograph to visual culture, as markers of history, and as creators of meaning. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 248 Colloquium: The French Revolution as Epic (4 Credits)

Cultural and social interpretations of the fundamental event in modern history. The staging of politics from the tribune to the guillotine. History as a literary art in prose, poetry, drama and film. Focus on Paris 1787-95. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 249 Early Modern Europe 1600-1815 (4 Credits)

A survey of the ancien régime. On behalf of the central State, war-making absolutists, Enlightened philosophes and patriotic republicans assailed privileges. The era culminated in the leveling of European societies through the French Revolution and the industrial revolution. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 250 Europe in the 19th Century (4 Credits)

The period 1815-1914, a century of fundamental change without a general war. The international order established at the Congress of Vienna and its challengers: liberalism, nationalism, Romanticism, socialism, secularism, capitalism and imperialism. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 251 Europe in the 20th Century (4 Credits)

Ideological and military rivalries of the contemporary era. Special attention to the origin, character and outcome of the two World Wars and to the experience of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 252 Women and Gender in Modern Europe, 1789–1918 (4 Credits)

A survey of European women’s experiences and constructions of gender from the French Revolution through World War I, focusing on Western Europe. Gendered relationships to work, family, politics, society, religion and the body, as well as shifting conceptions of femininity and masculinity, as revealed in novels, films, treatises, letters, paintings, plays and various secondary sources. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 253 Women and Gender in Contemporary Europe (4 Credits)

Women’s experience and constructions of gender in the commonly recognized major events of the 20th century. Introduction to major thinkers of the period through primary sources, documents and novels, as well as to the most significant categories in the growing secondary literature in 20th-century European history of women and gender. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 254 Colloquium: Liberalism and Socialism (4 Credits)

Rethinking individual and community in the wake of the French and industrial revolutions. Readings from de Maistre, Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Fourier, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Marx and Mill. Also considered are their views on art, religion, science and women. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 255 Colloquium: Art and Politics in the Era of Fascism (4 Credits)

The cultural context of fascism. Readings from Nietzsche, Sorel, Wilde, Pareto, Marinetti, Mussolini and Hitler, as well as studies of psychology, degenerate painting and music. Both politicians and artists claimed to be Nietzschean free spirits. Who best understood his call to ruthless creativity? Enrollment limited to 18. {A}{H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 258 Modern Africa (4 Credits)

This course provides an introductory survey of African history under colonial rule and beyond. In doing so, the course offers students a framework for understanding the political, social and economic history of modern Africa by foregrounding the strategies African peoples employed as they made sense of and confronted their changing historical landscapes. Key subjects include the construction of the colonial state, African experiences with colonial rule, the dilemmas of decolonization and life in an independent Africa. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 259dc Colloquium: Topics in African History-Decolonization: A People's History (4 Credits)

Recently, talk of “decolonization” seems to be everywhere. Yet, absent from much of the contemporary discourse on decolonization is a reflection on the experiences and perspectives of those who lived through this era of upheaval, uncertainty and, for many, hope. Focusing on African history from approximately 1945-1980, this course centers such perspectives as it traces how activists, youth, political leaders, everyday women and men, and many others understood and articulated their hopes, ambitions and struggles in their attempts to construct a world after empire. This course is open to all students and assumes no prior knowledge of African history. Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 259dd Colloquium: Topics in African History-Discourses of Development (4 Credits)

This course interrogates and historicizes the problem of “development” in 20th-century Africa. In doing so, we query the assumptions made by colonial officials, postcolonial leaders, social scientific experts and local communities as they sought to understand and articulate African pathways into a largely ill-defined social and economic modernity. Key subjects of enquiry include an analysis of the relationship between western and non-western “modernities,” and explorations into the link between knowledge and power in our own interpretations of the past and of the so-called “underdeveloped world.” Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 259fm Colloquium: Topics in African History-Femininities, Masculinities and Sexualities in Africa (4 Credits)

This course examines the political, social and economic role of women, gender and sexuality in African history, while paying particular attention to the ways in which a wide variety of Africans engaged, understood and negotiated the multiple meanings of femininity, masculinity and sexuality in the changing political and social landscapes associated with life in Africa. Key issues addressed in the course include marriage and respectability, colonial domesticity regimes, sex and religion. Additionally, students interrogate the diversity of methodological techniques scholars have employed in their attempts to write African gender history. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 259sp Colloquium: Topics in African History-Sport in Modern Africa (4 Credits)

This course explores the social and cultural history of sport in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa. Key subjects covered will be how a focus on sport helps us rethink African colonial encounters, the popular politics of the postcolonial state, and pan-Africanism. We will also reflect on how African sports history challenges us to think more deeply about African ideas of work, gender, and social mobility. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 262 Colloquium: The History of the N-Word: Race, Violence and Language in the United States (4 Credits)

The N-word is the great symbol of white supremacy in the United States. When spoken by African Americans, it emerges as a powerful symbol of anti-racist politics, verbal protest and artistic expression. What does the N-word really mean? How does it create a firestorm in certain contexts, but not others? In this interdisciplinary course, students explore history, film, literature, music and political debate to look closely at the histories of race and racism in the U.S. They also ask larger questions about how to talk about the N-word, "the atomic bomb of racial slurs," in the classroom and in public. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 265 Race, Gender and US Citizenship, 1776-1865 (4 Credits)

Analysis of the historical realities, social movements, cultural expression and political debates that shaped U.S. citizenship from the Declaration of Independence to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. From the hope of liberty and equality to the exclusion of marginalized groups that made whiteness, maleness and native birth synonymous with Americanness. How African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants and women harnessed the Declaration of Independence and its ideology to define themselves as citizens of the United States. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 266 Emancipation and the Afterlife of Slavery (4 Credits)

Examines the longevity of the U.S. Civil War in historical memory, as a pivotal period in the development of American racism and African American activism. Explores cutting-edge histories, primary source materials, documentaries, popular films, and visual and political culture. Explores the Civil War as a mass slave insurrection and studies the myriad meanings of Emancipation. Looks at the impact of slavery on race and racism on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 267 United States, 1877-1945: Race, Capitalism, Justice (4 Credits)

Survey of the major economic, political and social changes of this period, primarily through the lens of race, class and gender, to understand the role of ordinary people in shaping defining events, including industrial capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, mass immigration and migration, urbanization, the rise of mass culture, nationalism, war, feminism, labor radicalism, civil rights and other liberatory movements for social justice. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 268 US Indigenous Histories of the 19th Century (4 Credits)

Students learn about the evolving meaning of ‘Indigeneity’ and the centrality of Indigenous peoples in the history of the United States. The course moves through the 19th century roughly chronologically, beginning in 1800 and concluding in the early 1900s. Lectures focus on different places, themes and Indigenous peoples’ histories, though topics may at times overlap and extend beyond defined time periods. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 270sr Colloquium: Topics in American History-Anatomy of a Slave Revolt (4 Credits)

During slavery, white Americans, especially U.S. slaveholders, feared the specter of insurrection. Uprisings at Stono or those led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved that slaves often fought back. Yet the central historiographical question remains: why didn’t U.S. slaves overthrow enslavement like Haitian slaves did on Santo Domingo? Enslaved people challenged slavery in a variety of ways including violence, revolts, maroon communities, truancy, passing, suicide and day-to-day resistance. This course examines the primary documents and contentious historical debates surrounding the import of slave resistance, primarily in the American South. Students examine slave societies, theories on race, gender, sexuality and resistance, as well as modern literature and film to investigate violent and nonviolent resistance and how they are memorialized both in history and in the popular imagination. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 271/ REL 271 Colloquium: Religion and US Capitalism (4 Credits)

Offered as HST 271 and REL 271. Was Jesus a revolutionary socialist? Or did he preach an ethic of self-help? Is it holy to be poor? Or is prosperity a moral duty? This course focuses particularly on the relationship between religion and capitalism in the realms of economic and moral ideas, labor and working class politics, business history, and grassroots social movements. It covers such topics as: utopian communes; debates over slavery and free labor; the "lived religion" of the working class; Christian and Jewish socialism; "New Age" spirituality and the counterculture; liberation theology and racial capitalism; big business and the Prosperity Gospel; and conservative Christianity in the age of Chick-Fil-A. Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {H}

Spring, Variable

HST 276rj Colloquium: Topics-Historians Read the News-Race, Democracy and Reproductive Justice (4 Credits)

This course interrogates the intersection between current events and historical research. Exploring topics including race, debt, citizenship, democracy and reproductive justice, the course offers a comparative and transnational perspective of how historians and other historically focused scholars have approached topics that have dominated the recent news cycle, while thinking through the challenges and possibilities of doing historical research on subjects of contemporary importance. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 277 Controversies in American Thought (4 Credits)

This course explores some of the most explosive controversies to shape modern America – from debates over Darwinism to the so-called “culture wars” – through the lens of intellectual history. Students examine how the emergence of new ideas about science, capitalism, democracy, race and gender have fueled divisive political and cultural conflict in the United States since the mid-19th century. In the process, they wrestle with invigorating intellectual critiques of American life, while thinking historically about the transformative power of ideas, both academic and popular. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 278 Colloquium: A Decolonial U.S. Women’s History (4 Credits)

An introduction to U.S. women's history with Black, Indigenous, Mexican and Puerto Rican women at the center. This course is also guided by the cultural and theoretical work of women of color to decolonize knowledge, history and the world. Discussions include colonialism, emancipation from slavery, racial segregation and exclusion, industrial and neoliberal capitalism, imperialism, mass migration, labor, feminism, civil rights and a range of liberation movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Emphasis on the oral tradition and working-class cultures. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 280gi Colloquium: Topics in United States Social History-Im/migration and Transnational Cultures (4 Credits)

Explores significance of im/migrant workers and their transnational social movements to U.S. history in the late 19th and 20th centuries. How have im/migrants responded to displacement, marginalization and exclusion, by redefining the meanings of home, citizenship, community and freedom? What are the connections between mass migration and U.S. imperialism? What are the histories of such cross-border social movements as labor radicalism, borderlands feminism, Black and Brown Liberation, and anti-colonialism? Topics also include racial formation; criminalization, incarceration and deportation; reproductive justice; and the politics of gender, sexuality, race, class and nation. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 286 Colloquium: Recent Debates in the History of Gender and Sexuality (4 Credits)

This course considers methodologies and debates in modern historical writing about gender and sexuality, with a primary focus on European history. Students develop an understanding of significant, contemporary historiographic trends and research topics in the history of women and gender. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 287/ JUD 287 The Holocaust (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 287 and HST 287.The history of the Final Solution, from the role of European antisemitism and the origins of Nazi ideology to the implementation of a systematic program to annihilate European Jewry. How did Hitler establish a genocidal regime? How did Jews physically, culturally and theologically respond to this persecution?. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

HST 290hs Colloquium: Topics in Gender and the Archive-Histories of Smith College (4 Credits)

This course examines the place of gender in the archive through active engagement with the history of Smith Special Collections and its holdings. Students study the origins of the Sophia Smith Collection and have opportunities to engage with the collections documenting a range of personalities and institutions. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 291 Reacting to the Middle Ages (4 Credits)

This course uses an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games to teach about the society, culture, and politics of the medieval world. Students are assigned character roles with specific goals and must communicate, collaborate, and compete effectively to advance their objectives. Class sessions are run by students, students adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of these roles they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas persuasively in papers, speeches, or other public presentations to try to win the game. No previous experience with Reacting to the Past or knowledge of the medieval world is required. Enrollment limited to 30. {H}

Spring, Variable

HST 300 Public Writing about Nationalism - A Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing (4 Credits)

Because of its claims to define culture, economy, and politics in the modern age, nationalism has become the subject of a multidisciplinary field which offers advanced students in an array of majors a capstone opportunity to consolidate and express what they've learned. How does nationalism today continue to underwrite political projects across the world? We will take this question as a point of departure and explore how to translate complex scholarly conversations about nationalism into public discourse interventions. The work in class will focus on writing, work-shopping, and revising the assignments designed in different formats of public discourse. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 314 Seminar: Sex, God and Rock 'n' Roll (4 Credits)

This course explores the various moral revolutions that have transformed the United States since 1960, focusing particularly on the emergence of new trends in American culture, religion and intellectual life. Students examine how battles over private and public morality helped to define the postwar years, shaping social activism, public policy and popular attitudes towards race, gender and inequality. In the process, they learn about the historical roots of present-day polarization, exploring the emergence of cultural and moral worldviews that continue to divide Americans today. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. (E) {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 355fp Seminar: Topics in Social History-History in the First Person-Ego Documents and Memoir as Sources (4 Credits)

Historians rely in their research on published and unpublished ego-documents such as journals, correspondence, scrapbooks and memoir—even scraps of paper and marginalia. Through examination of the writing of historians who have centered ego documents in their work, students are introduced to and grapple with questions of method and practice. Students learn how to generate a substantial literature review and perform original archival research. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 355gw Seminar: Topics in Social History-Gender and the Aftermath of War in the Twentieth Century (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the work of reconstruction, recovery and memorialization in the aftermath of war and considers how that work interacted with gendered experience. Primary questions include: Was the aftermath of war as gender-specific as war experience itself? What role did women take in postwar recoveries? How was the aftermath of war reflected in cultural production through fiction, film and visual art in the twentieth century? Primary focus is on Europe, but students can expect to actively engage with the transnational effects and sources. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 355hs Sem: Topics in Social History-Histories of Smith College (4 Credits)

This course examines the place of gender in the archive through active engagement with the history of Smith College Special Collections and its holdings. Students acquire grounding in the history of the College, study the origins of the Sophia Smith Collection and have opportunities to choose to work with collections documenting a range of personalities, institutions and movements. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. (E) {H}

Fall

HST 371rs Seminar: Topics in 19th Century United States History-Remembering Slavery: A Gendered Reading of the WPA Interviews (4 Credits)

Despite the particular degradation, violence and despair of enslavement in the United States, African American men and women built families, traditions and a legacy of resistance. Using the WPA interviews—part of the New Deal Federal Writers Project of the 1930s—this course looks at the historical memory of former slaves by reading and listening to their own words. How did 70- through 90-year-old former slaves remember their childhoods and young adulthoods during slavery? And how do scholars make sense of these interviews given they were conducted when Jim Crow segregation was at its pinnacle? The course examines the WPA interviews as historical sources by studying scholarship that relies heavily on them. Most importantly, students explore debates that swirl around the interviews and challenge their validity on multiple fronts, even as they remain the richest sources of African American oral history regarding slavery. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 383dw Seminar: Topics in Research in U.S. Women's History-Domestic Worker Organizing (4 Credits)

This is an advanced research seminar in which students work closely with archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection and other archives to explore histories of resistance, collective action and grassroots organizing among domestic workers in the United States, from the mid-18th century to the present. Domestic work has historically been done by women of color and been among the lowest paid, most vulnerable and exploited forms of labor. Student research assists the National Domestic Workers Alliance, as they incorporate history into their political education curriculum and use history as an organizing tool in their current campaigns. Previous course in U.S. women’s history and/or relevant coursework in HST, SWG, AFR, SOC or LAS recommended. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 383pc Seminar: Topics in Research in U.S. Women's History-Researching People of Color at Smith College (4 Credits)

The history of students of color at Smith College. Draws from readings about African American, Latinx, Asian American, Indigenous, international and other students of color in higher education. Explores the Smith College archives for documents, ephemera and oral histories. Students also familiarize themselves with archival materials compiled by student activists and scour The Sophian (Smith’s weekly newspaper) to uncover the histories of racial policy, racism, community-building, social justice and activism at Smith College. Students work to produce one original academic project such as a podcast, a digital timeline, another digital humanities project or a traditional research paper. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 390 Seminar: Teaching History (4 Credits)

A consideration of how the study of history, broadly conceived, gets translated into curriculum for middle and secondary schools. Addressing a range of topics in American history, students develop lesson and unit plans using primary and secondary resources, films, videos and internet materials. Discussions focus on both the historical content and the pedagogy used to teach it. Does not count for seminar credit in the history major. Restrictions: Juniors, seniors and graduate students only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall

HST 399 Historical Pedagogy (4 Credits)

This course is focused on the practice of teaching history at the college level. It is an independent course, but participation in it is also dependent on the students’ roles as teaching assistants in HST 150. Key pedagogical themes and debates explored in the class include issues around student engagement, teaching research and writing, and what it means to help students learn to think historically. Students in the course also develop their own research project centered on historical pedagogy as well as design their own course. Restrictions: History majors only. Enrollment limited to 2. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)

Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring

HST 431 Honors Thesis (8 Credits)

This is a full-year course. Department permission required.

Fall

HST 580 Special Problems in Historical Study (4 Credits)

Arranged individually with graduate students. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring

Crosslisted Courses

AFR 117 History of African American People to 1960 (4 Credits)

An examination of the broad contours of the history of African American people in the United States from ca. 1600 to 1960. Particular emphasis is given to how African Americans influenced virtually every aspect of U.S. society, slavery and Constitutional changes after 1865, debates on the meaning of freedom and citizenship, and the efforts to contest discrimination, segregation and anti-Black violence. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 202ba Colloquium: Topics in Africana Studies-The Black Archive (4 Credits)

Why has the construction of archives that center on the experiences of people of African descent been so critical to black political, cultural and social life? What do black archives look like and what do they offer? How do they expand the way archives are considered in general? This course seeks to address these questions by examining the conception and development of black archives, primarily, although not exclusively, as they arose in the United States across the twentieth century. Restrictions: AFR 202 may be taken for credit a total of three times with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AFR 335 Seminar: Free Blacks in the U.S. Before 1865 (4 Credits)

A study of the history of free blacks from the 17th century to the abolition of slavery in 1865. A major problem created by the establishment of slavery based on race by the 1660s was what was to be the status of free blacks. Each local and state government addressed the political, economic and even religious questions raised by having free blacks in a slave society. This course addresses a neglected theme in the history of the Afro-American experience, the history of free blacks before the passage of the 13th amendment. AFR 117 recommended. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AMS 215ir Colloquium: Topics in Contemporary Native/Indigenous Studies-Indigenous Climate Resiliency (4 Credits)

It is often noted in mainstream news media that Indigenous peoples are “on the front lines” of the climate crisis, while providing little explanation as to why this is. Narratives of inherent Indigenous vulnerability obscure the ways in which Indigenous communities have mobilized to navigate environmental change, not only in the face of contemporary global warming, but historically, as settler colonial incursions radically transformed landscapes and constrained Indigenous knowledge practices that have provided tools for adaptation for thousands of years. This course considers how Indigenous climate vulnerability is largely a product of settler colonialism—not only a process and system, but also a particular way of understanding and relating to the nonhuman environment. Enrollment limited to 25. (E) {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AMS 215sc Colloquium: Topics in Contemporary Native/Indigenous Studies-Indigenous Critiques of Settler Colonialism (4 Credits)

Long before settler colonialism was developed as a theoretical lens and settler colonial studies emerged as an academic field, Indigenous peoples in North America were approaching it through their own knowledge traditions and frameworks. This course centers the long history of Indigenous theoretical understandings of settler colonialism: through the work of “prophets” and visionaries like Handsome Lake (Seneca) and Tenskwatawa (Shawnee), “Red Progressives” like Zitkala-Să (Lakota), post-WWII intellectuals like Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), and many more. The course also considers how critiques of settler colonialism have been embedded in Indigenous future imaginaries and have been an integral part of the emergence of Indigenous internationalism in the 20th century. Enrollment limited to 25. (E) {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AMS 227 Trade and Theft in Early America (4 Credits)

A seventeenth-century engraving imagines an encounter between two men wearing feathers and holding onto the same string of shells: depending on your perspective, this image looks like a scene of trade or one of theft at knife-point. In understanding moments from the past, representation and perspective shape not just interpretation, but sources themselves. Seeing moments as both trade and theft opens them to tellings and analyses from multiple perspectives, exposing overlooked elements and revealing the ways in which histories are made. This course introduces students to Early American history (c1500-1800) through the themes of trade, theft, representation and perspective. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

AMS 229 Native New England (4 Credits)

This course interrogates the space now known as New England by learning about it as a land with histories, peoples and life ways that predate and exceed the former English colonies and current United States. Students study the cultural distinctiveness of the Native peoples of New England, for example, the Mohawk, Mohegan, Abenaki, Wampanoag and Schaghticoke peoples, and the historical processes of encounter, adaptation, resistance and renewal that have characterized Native life in the area for centuries. This course explores the histories of the pre- and post-contact period through the perspectives of various Native communities, and discusses the legacies of these histories for Native New England today. {H}{L}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

AMS 230cc Colloquium: Topics on the Asian American Experience-Chinese Diasporic Communities in the US and the World (4 Credits)

The course examines the histories of different Chinese diasporic communities in the world, including the United States as they relate to themes of race, empire, ethnicity, gender, globalization and nationalism. Enrollment limited to 20.

Fall, Spring, Variable

AMS 302 Seminar: The Material Culture of New England, 1630–1860 (4 Credits)

This course examines the material culture of everyday life in New England from the earliest colonial settlements to the Victorian era. It introduces students to the growing body of material culture studies and the ways in which historic landscapes, architecture, furniture, textiles, metalwork, ceramics, foodways and domestic environments are interpreted as cultural documents and as historical evidence. Offered on-site at Historic Deerfield (with transportation available from the Smith campus), the course offers students a unique opportunity to study the museum’s world-famous collections in a hands-on, interactive setting with curators and historians. Utilizing the disciplines of history, art and architectural history, anthropology, and archaeology, students explore the relationships between objects and ideas and the ways in which items of material culture both individually and collectively convey patterns of everyday life. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}{H}

Spring

ARX 340 Seminar: Taking the Archives Public (4 Credits)

This seminar brings together a cohort of archives concentrators and other advanced students to explore contemporary issues at the intersection of archives and public history. The readings focus on case studies and the challenges in preservation, access and interpretation of archival materials. The class analyzes how these materials become part of a meaningful and usable past for general audiences while taking into account the dynamics of national and collective identity formation, trauma, memorialization, social justice, and the changing digital landscape in the fields of public history and cultural heritage work. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 15. {H}

Spring

ENV 207 Introduction to Environmental History (4 Credits)

This course offers an introduction to the methods and key debates in environmental history, the history of the relationship between humanity and the “rest of nature.” Since the 1970s, environmental historians have used an environmental lens to examine politics, economy, religion, gender, race, migration, art, music, literature and culture. In addition to typical archives of texts and other historical remnants created by people, environmental historians also avail themselves to “natural” archives, including the ice core, tree-ring and lake sediment samples collected by climate scientists. Discussions in this course include historical conceptions of nature and the natural world, human settlement, human and animal relations, disaster, agrarian development, the adoption of carbon energy, social movements centered on the environment, and environmentalism and the Anthropocene. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 103 Mental Health in Fiction (4 Credits)

Mental illness continues to thwart scientific attempts at understanding; what, if anything, can fiction teach us? This course explores mental health and mental illness in novels and short stories, spanning the last century and the globe. Combining these fictional sources with historical study, the course explores themes of gender, sexuality, race, institutionalization, generational trauma and language in a variety of contexts. Students also complete their own short fictional works in addition to engaging with the texts and their limits as sources for the history of psychiatry. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {H}{L}

Fall, Variable

FYS 138 Democracy in America: From the Revolution to Trump (4 Credits)

This course explores the history of democracy in America. Students examine how political leaders and social movements have fought to expand the bounds of democratic citizenship ever since the American Revolution, and how others have fought to restrict it. Students trace the evolution of both defenses and critiques of democratic self-governance and consider how polarization, inequality and globalization strain modern democracy. The class reflects critically on what exactly democracy has looked like -- and can look like -- not only in formal politics, but also in economic and social life more broadly. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 142 Reacting to the Past (5 Credits)

In this course, students learn by taking on roles, in elaborate games set in the past; they learn skills--speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork--in order to prevail in complicated situations. Reacting roles do not have a fixed script and outcome. While students adhere to the intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned, they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas in papers, speeches or public presentations. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors guide students and grade their oral and written work. It draws students into the past, promotes engagement with big ideas and improves intellectual and academic skills. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 24. WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 154 The World of Anna Karenina (4 Credits)

This course explores the social, cultural and political history of late imperial Russia through Leo Tolstoy's iconic novel Anna Karenina. Students will learn about the production of the novel but also focus on such themes as modernization and industrialization, gender and sexuality, social construction of family and marriage, empire and colonialism. They will also study the rise of realism in art and the ways in which the Russian educated classes used the new style as a form of social critique. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 173 Domestic Workers Make History: Storytelling and Organizing (4 Credits)

This course is an introduction to U.S. women’s history with working-class immigrant women and women of color at the center. Domestic work – housekeeping and care work in private households – has historically been done by women of color and has been among the lowest paid, most vulnerable and exploited forms of labor. The class studies histories of labor relations and conditions as well as resistance, collective action and organizing among domestic workers. Since storytelling has been a main way that domestic workers have built their movement overtime, the course centers on domestic workers' stories of their own lives. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 182 Fighting the Power: Black Protest and Politics Since 1970 (4 Credits)

This course examines the various forms of black "politics," broadly conceived, that emerged and developed in the wake of the modern civil rights movement to the present time. Major topics of concern include: black nationalism and electoral politics, black feminism, resistance to mass incarceration, the war on drugs, black urban poverty, the rise of the black middle class, reparations, the Obama presidency, Black Lives Matter and other contemporary social movements. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

FYS 183 Geisha, Wise Mothers, and Working Women (4 Credits)

This course examines images of Japanese women that are prevalent in the West, and to some extent Japan. The focus is on three key figures considered definitive representations of Japanese women: the geisha, the good wife/wise mother and the working woman. The class reads popular treatments including novels, primary sources and scholarly articles. The task is to sort through these images, keeping in mind the importance of perception versus reality and change over time. Restrictions: First years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 208/ MES 208 Introduction to the History of the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as HST 208 and MES 208. This course examines the history of the modern Middle East from a global perspective. How have gender, economy, ecology and religion shaped Middle Eastern empires and nation-states within a broader world? The course begins with transformations in Egypt, Iran and the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and World War I. Next, it turns to experiences of colonialism, the rise of independent nation-states and the birth of new political movements. Students learn to appreciate the diversity of the region’s cultures, languages and peoples and to critically assess how the Middle East has been imagined from without and within. Enrollment limited to 40. {H}

Fall, Spring, Annually

HST 228/ JUD 228 The Jew in the Medieval World (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 228 and HST 228. How does the medieval period influence or complicate contemporary understandings of race, religious cooperation and rivalry, and constructions of otherness?  Explores intellectual and cultural cross-pollination in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Europe, including crises reflected in disputations, crusades, exile and murder. Open to students at all levels. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 237/ MES 237 Colloquium: Mobility and Migration in the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as MES 237 and HST 237. The history of the modern Middle East is a story of border-crossing as well as border-making. From 19th century immigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the Americas, to today's migrant laborers in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf, the region has been forged by those who move within and beyond national borders. How have forces of gender, class, and ethnicity shaped these journeys? This course examines the gendered processes of movement and migration--voluntary and involuntary--that have shaped the modern Middle East from the 19th century to the present. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 244/ MES 244 Colloquium:Thinking Revolution: Histories of Revolt in the Modern Middle East (4 Credits)

Offered as MES 244 and HST 244. How could we theorize revolution from the MENA region? How might we connect older histories and vocabularies of social change to recent events in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia? In the first part of this course, students engage prominent theories of revolution generated within EuroAmerican and MENA contexts. Next, we consider diverse theories of social change generated within key moments in the history of the modern Middle East, from Ottoman constitution in 1876 to postcolonial revolts in Oman, Yemen, and Algeria. Finally, we consider the 2011 Arab spring within this longer history of social change in the region. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

HST 271/ REL 271 Colloquium: Religion and US Capitalism (4 Credits)

Offered as HST 271 and REL 271. Was Jesus a revolutionary socialist? Or did he preach an ethic of self-help? Is it holy to be poor? Or is prosperity a moral duty? This course focuses particularly on the relationship between religion and capitalism in the realms of economic and moral ideas, labor and working class politics, business history, and grassroots social movements. It covers such topics as: utopian communes; debates over slavery and free labor; the "lived religion" of the working class; Christian and Jewish socialism; "New Age" spirituality and the counterculture; liberation theology and racial capitalism; big business and the Prosperity Gospel; and conservative Christianity in the age of Chick-Fil-A. Enrollment limited to 18. (E) {H}

Spring, Variable

HST 287/ JUD 287 The Holocaust (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 287 and HST 287.The history of the Final Solution, from the role of European antisemitism and the origins of Nazi ideology to the implementation of a systematic program to annihilate European Jewry. How did Hitler establish a genocidal regime? How did Jews physically, culturally and theologically respond to this persecution?. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 223 The Modern Jewish Experience (4 Credits)

A thematic survey of Jewish history and thought from the 18th century to the present, examining Jews as a minority in modern Europe and in global diaspora. We analyze changing dynamics of integration and exclusion of Jews in various societies as well as diverse forms of Jewish religion, culture and identity among Sephardic, Ashkenazic and Mizrahi Jews. Readings include major philosophic, mystical and political works in addition to primary sources on the lives of Jewish women and men, families and communities, and messianic and popular movements. Throughout the course, we explore tensions between assimilation and cohesion, tradition and renewal, and history and memory. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 227 Women and Gender in Jewish History (4 Credits)

Previously REL 227. An exploration of Jewish women’s changing social roles, religious stances and cultural expressions in a variety of historical settings from ancient to modern times. How did Jewish women negotiate religious tradition, gender and cultural norms to fashion lives for themselves as individuals and as family and community members in diverse societies? Readings from a wide range of historical, religious, theoretical and literary works in order to address examples drawn from Biblical and rabbinic Judaism, medieval Islamic and Christian lands, modern Europe, America and the Middle East. Students' final projects involve archival work in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 284 Colloquium: The Lost World of East European Jewry, 1750-1945 (4 Credits)

The modern history of the largest Jewish community in the world, from life under the Russian tsars until its extermination in World War II. Topics include Jewish political autonomy under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; the shifting effects on Jews in Russian, Soviet and Polish society of Partition, tsarist legislation, Revolution, Sovietization and the emergence of the modern nation-state; the folkways and domestic culture of Ashkenaz; competition between new forms of ecstatic religious expression and Jewish Enlightenment thought; the rise of mass politics (Zionism, Socialism, Diaspora Nationalism, Yiddishism) and the role of language (Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish) in the creation of secular Jewish identity; and the tension between memory and nostalgia in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Concludes with an analysis of the recently opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 288 History of Israel (4 Credits)

Looking to make better sense of today's headlines? A historical survey of the State of Israel, from the 19th-century origins of Zionism to the present. Competing interpretations of Israel's political and cultural history through analysis of primary sources, literature and film, and debates over how history is written and by whom. Places discussions about Zionism and Israel within the broader histories of Judaism, Palestine, Europe and the Middle East. Open to students at all levels. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 362yl Seminar: Topics in Jewish Studies-Yiddishland (4 Credits)

Explores the relationship between East European Jewish history and post-Holocaust and post-Communist memory through the prism of Yiddishland, the dream of a transnational homeland defined by language and culture rather than borders. The seminar includes a course field trip to Poland over March break. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only; JUD 362 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}

Spring, Variable

LAS 201br Colloquium: Topics in Latin American and Latino/a/x Studies-Banana Republics: Crops and Capitalism (4 Credits)

This colloquium explores the socio-environmental trajectories of four crops in Latin America. From the deep history of potatoes to the dawn of transgenics, this course centers crops as a pivotal lens for examining the dynamics of capitalist development in the hemisphere. The first unit studies the potato and its contribution to the major demographic trends that remade the modern world. The second unit discusses histories of colonialism, sugar, slavery and racialized capitalism. The third unit examines the establishment of banana agriculture as a mechanism of empire-making. The final unit unveils the emergence of GMOs and the centrality of Mexican maize. Restrictions: LAS 201 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

LAS 260 Colloquium: Animal Histories of Latin America (4 Credits)

This colloquium centers animals as the core of a “more-than-human” account for understanding four major environmental questions in the history of Latin America: the adaption of societies to high-altitude environments, the ecological transformations framed by colonization, the kinetic capacities of emerging nation-states and the neoliberal commodification of nature. Through the interrogation of guinea pigs, sheep, horses and vicuñas, correspondingly, this course ventures into the examination of animals as proxies, partners, porters and portraits of narratives usually studied as strictly anthropogenic and anthropocentric. Enrollment limited to 20. (E) {H}{S}

Variable

LAS 301hw Seminar: Topics in Latin American and Latino/a Studies-Deep History of Water (4 Credits)

The earth is largely covered by water. Physical bodies are considerably made of water. Channeled water is a primary sign of civilization, and there is a search of water beyond planetary frontiers. This course interrogates how hydric and hydraulic narratives may inform the understanding of past, present and future visions of power and society. Grounded in Latin America and global in its aim, this course is structured in four larger sections: the hydraulic origins of ancient city states, colonialism and the control of waterscapes, the hydric demise of nation-states and the future quest for water. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring, Variable

MES 213 Colloquium: Sex and Power In The Middle East (4 Credits)

This course invites students to explore how sexuality has been central to power and resistance in the Middle East. When and how have empires, colonial powers and nation states tried to regulate intimacy, sex, love and reproduction? How have sexual practices shaped social life, and how have perceptions of these practices changed over time? The course introduces theoretical tools for the history of sexuality and explores how contests over sexuality, reproduction and the body shaped empires, colonial states and nationalist projects. Finally, the course examines contemporary debates about sexuality as a basis for political mobilization in the Middle East today. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

SWG 257 Colloquium: Queer Northampton (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the growing field of queer American history. This course explores the histories of same-sex desire, practice, and identity, as well as gender transgressions, from the late 19th century to the present. Using a wide range of sources, including archival documents, films, work by historians, and oral histories, students investigate how and why people with same-sex desire and non-normative gender expressions formed communities, struggled against bigotry and organized movements for social and political change. This course pays close attention to the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality, and the ways that difference has shaped queer history. Prerequisite: SWG 150. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

SWG 270 Colloquium: Oral History and Lesbian Subjects (4 Credits)

Grounding the work in the current scholarship in lesbian history, this course explores lesbian, queer and bisexual communities, cultures and activism. While becoming familiar with the existing narratives about lesbian and queer lives, students are introduced to the method of oral history as a key documentation strategy in the production of lesbian history. How do research methods need to be adapted, including oral history, in order to talk about lesbian and queer lives? Texts include secondary literature on 20th-century lesbian cultures and communities, oral history theory and methodology, and primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC). Students conduct, transcribe, edit and interpret their own interviews for their final project. The oral histories from this course are archived with the Documenting Lesbian Lives collection in the SSC. Prerequisite: SWG 150 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 20. {H}{L}

Spring

Additional Programmatic Information

Director: Darcy Buerkle

History 430d Thesis
8 credits
Full-year course; offered each year

History 431 Thesis
8 credits
Offered fall semester each year

Requirements

The History honors program is a one-year program taken during the senior year. If admitted, students write a thesis in both semesters of the senior year, or they may propose to write the thesis in one semester, in each case for eight credits. Admission requires a grade-point average of 3.5 inside and outside the major.

The central feature of the history honors program is the writing of a senior thesis with the guidance of a faculty adviser. Each honors candidate defends the thesis at an oral examination which relates the thesis topic to the historical scholarship of the chosen field. The internal honors deadline for a complete polished draft suitable for review by a second reader is the Monday after spring break. Those drafts will then be evaluated by both the first and second readers. Readers will give comments that allow students to incorporate feedback so that they can turn in the final version by the College deadline, (the first week of April). A fall semester thesis is due the first day of the spring semester, with the oral defense normally falling before spring break.

If you would like to be considered for the honors program, meet with a faculty member in the history department to discuss your ideas and develop a proposal with the assistance of the potential thesis supervisor, during the spring semester of your junior year. Your proposal should include a full description of your topic, your planned research methodology (the breadth of sources you will use and how), a brief description of how your project fits into the historical scholarship on this topic, and a preliminary bibliography (including primary and secondary sources). The college requires that the faculty supervisor for the thesis be a member of the department, although you may have a second reader in another department or program. Submit your proposal to the Director of Honors in the History Department before the end of classes in your junior year, with the thesis supervisor’s signature.

Detailed information and the official application for honors are available at the class deans website under guidelines and forms for academic procedures.

The history honors major comprises 11 semester courses, at least six of which shall normally be taken at Smith, distributed as follows.

  1. HST 150 The Historian’s Craft

  2. Field of concentration: three semester courses, at least one of which is a Smith history department seminar. Two of these may be historically oriented courses at the 200–level or above in other disciplines, approved by the student's adviser.

  3. The thesis counting for two courses (8 credits)

  4. Four History courses or seminars, of which three must be in two fields outside the field of concentration

  5. No more than three courses taken at the 100–level may count toward the major

  6. Geographic breadth: among the 11 semester courses counting towards the major there must be at least one course each in three of the following geographic regions

    1. Africa

    2. East Asia and Central Asia

    3. Europe

    4. Latin America and the Caribbean

    5. Middle East and South Asia

    6. North America

Courses in the field of concentration and outside the field of concentration may be used to satisfy this requirement. 

Courses cross–listed in the history department section of the catalogue count as history courses toward all requirements.

AP courses do not count toward the major or the Honors program.

The S/U grading option is not allowed for courses counting toward the history honors major.

A reading knowledge of foreign languages is highly desirable and is especially recommended for students planning an Honors major.

History Honors students choose one of two formats for their Honors projects: either a traditional thesis or an experimental thesis.

Traditional thesis: 

Historically, students wrote theses in the form of an extended essay, ranging in length from 60 to 100 pages. Theses are expected to develop a research question, locate the question in existing historiography, and utilize primary sources, demonstrating command of historical methods of inquiry and the ability to conduct independent research and analyze primary sources. The student defends the thesis before the thesis committee consisting of the thesis supervisor and at least one second faculty reader.

Experimental thesis:

The experimental thesis includes all of the above but is written in the form of a research article to be published in an undergraduate journal. The Honors student in consultation with the adviser develops a research question, analyzes existing historiography, conducts independent research and interprets primary sources. In the fall semester, the student completes the draft of a research article of 10-15 thousand words. In the spring semester, the student polishes and edits the article, and submits it to a peer-reviewed undergraduate journal. The experimental model also includes a defense of the thesis before the thesis committee consisting of the adviser and at least one second faculty reader. 

Recent honors thesis titles include:

"British and American Women in National-Socialist Propaganda"
"The Chinese Exclusion Era: Media, Politics and Community"
"The Choreography of Crucifixion" 
"La Reina, La Loca: The Medieval 'Madness' of Queen Juana I" 
"Imagining the Famiy: Neoliberalism and Welfare's End in the United States" 
"Rethinking Imperialism: Globalization, Trade, and Tea in the Qing Dynasty" 
"Sacral King to Augural Emperor: Transformations in Perspectives of Divination from Numa to Augustus"
"Between Russian and United States: Concepts and Conflicts of Jewish Citizenship and Subjecthood in the Early Twentieth Century"
 "When I Need You, I Shall Send For You: An Analysis of Aksumite and Himyarite Authority in an East Roman World"
"Are You Not Entertained? Gladiatorial Munera and the Making of Roman Imperial Careers"
"The Girl Behind the Man behind the Gun": Class Distinctions Among British Women Munitions Workers During the First World War"
"Specters from the Nursery: Issues of Legitimacy and the Impact of Rumor on the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89"
"Sixth-Century Italy: Crisis and Change, Reconciling Frankish Annals with Their Sources"
"we enjoyed Mrs. Woolf but felt her Cambridge was not ours"
"Merit-Based Admissions to Kosher Kitchens: Changing Demands of Jewish Students at Smith College, 1887 to Present Day"
"Caught with their Pants Down: Clausewitz versus Sun Tzu in Light of Hitler's Military Collapse in Normandy"
"From Active Cathar to Passive Dominican: The Evolution of Women's Spirituality in Medieval Southern France"
"The Presentation of a Queen [Elizabeth I of England]"
"The White Woman’s Burden [in India under the British Raj]"
"Mother or Devil: Interpreting the Mistress-Slave Girl Bond [in the United States]"
"From Intransigence to Consensus: A History of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland"
"The Intersection of Public Policy and Social Movements: A Study of Black Power Student Movements at Two Northern Urban Universities 1966-1972"
"The British in Ireland: The Ulster Plantation"
"Stalking a Lost Deed: The End of Democracy in Postwar Czechoslovakia"
"Horsemen of the Apocalypse: German Expressionists and the Process of Political Radicalization"
"A United Front for Peace and Freedom: Anti-Fascism, Activist Politics, and their Impact on Political Culture, 1922-1939 [in the United States]"
"Two Aspects of the Medieval Soul: Medieval Sexuality and the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus"
"Too Jewish? Ethnicity and Assimilation in American Vaudeville 1880-1930"
"The Right to Resistance: The Development of Constitutional Theory in Sixteenth-Century France"
"The Desert with No Walls: Reassessing the Historical Portrayal of Early Egyptian Monasticism"
"Avant-Garde with Mass Appeal: Potemkin and Mother as Popular Cinema"
"National Political Awareness in the Localities Before and During the English Civil Wars"
"Anne Boleyn and the Politics of Religious Reform"
"Excuse me, but did you hear a piercing scream?": British Foreign Policy 1935-38, and the Failure of Collective Security in the Political Cartoons of David Low"
"Blest Be the Tie that Binds: Mennonites, Conscientious Objectors, and the American State, 1917-1947"
"The Constitutions of Clarendon: Their Role in the Dispute between Thomas Becket and King Henry II"
"To Bear, or not to bear...: The marital and maternal choices of Mary and Elizabeth"
"The Propitious Problem of Shell Shock: World War I as a Turning Point for Psychiatry in Britain and Germany"
"Laquelle était la vraie France? Vichy France, Free France, and the International Labour Organisation during World War II"
"An Exploration of the Alta California Presidios as Agents of Colonialism With a Special Focus on the Chumash Revolt of 1824"
"Imperial Insanity: The Role of Imperial Ideology in the Understanding and Treatment of Shell-Shock in the First World War"
"Gendering Reform: Aristocratic Vice, Old Corruption, and the Mary Anne Clarke Affair in the Story of English Reform, 1763-1820"
"The Evolution of Greek Identity in the Roman World: Understanding, Accepting, and Supporting Roman Rule"
"Carriers of the Nation: Changes in Women’s Reproductive Power in the AIDS-era: A Case Study of Botswana"
"The Lobo-Cabernite Affair: A Close Look at the Case Study as History and Historical Problem"
“She’s Not There”: Beyond the Vilifications of Norma Khouri’s Honor Lost "
"Defining Rites: Parliamentary Discourse on the Kenyan Female Circumcision Crisis 1929-1931"
"Swells, Men of the World, and Gentlemen: The Construction of Masculinities in London High Society, 1850-1880"
“Our Republic”: St. Enda’s College 1908-1916"
"Warwick the Queenmaker: John Dudley and the Succession Crisis of 1553"
"The Tenishev School Experiment: Pedagogy and Poetry"
"How Personal Crisis Made the Risorgimento: Mazzini and Cavour Before and After 1836"
“A Very Threatened and Nervous Group of People”: Public Scrutiny of Sexuality at Smith College in Two Historical Moments"
"Ambiguous Selves: Madeleine Pelletier’s Interwar Autobiographical Writing"
"Revival in Uganda: Church, State, and the Mukono Crisis of 1941"
"On Our Backs With a Bad Attitude: A History of the First Lesbian Sex Magazines"
"When the 'Brown Pest' Showed up at the Party: St. Pauli under the Nazi Regime"
"Remembering and Misremembering Louis Antoine Saint-Just""
"I defy anyone to take from me this independent like which I have given myself in the centuries and in the skies': Louis Antoine Saint-Just, Between Man and Myth"
"Stalinist Orientalism: Images of Soviet Central Asians and Deterritorialized National Identities in USSR in Construction"
"Let Us Sing Our Victory Long Live Sound"
"Popular Music in the American and French Revolutions"
"Legend and Myth-making during the Duke d'Enghien Affair"
"The Interim Solution: The Nazification of Hamburg's Germanistikand the Existence of the German University under National Socialism"
"Constructions of Islamic Identity: What is the Role of Islamic Institutions in Response to the Challence of Laicite in France"

Students wishing to pursue individualized study in their junior or senior years on campus may enroll in a Special Studies tutorial (HST 400). A student must secure the agreement of a faculty member to supervise a particular project prior to enrolling for a Special Studies. Examples of the kinds of work done in Special Studies tutorials include:

  • In-depth reading in an area not covered in another course
  • The execution of a research proposal developed in another course (either library research or empirical research); and other options, to be negotiated between the student and a particular faculty member

Prerequisites for Candidates for Admission

  • Transcript of undergraduate study giving evidence of academic achievement
  • GRE examination

Distribution Requirement of Courses in History for the MAT Degree in History

The distribution requirement of courses in history can be fulfilled by courses taken at Smith College or by comparable courses taken at other colleges or universities prior to enrollment at Smith College. Equivalency will be determined in the manner currently used by the Curriculum Committee of the Department of History in evaluating and, if warranted, granting credit toward the undergraduate major for courses taken while studying away from Smith College. It is assumed that, normally, MAT candidates in history will have had a major or minor in history for their bachelor's degree and that their history courses taken at Smith College will supplement and build on their earlier courses in history at the college level.

For more information about applying to the MAT Program in History visit the Department of Education and Child Study or contact the Office of Graduate & Special Programs, 413-585-3050.

Education & Child Study 

Graduate & Special Programs

Optimal Preparation

Ten history courses at the intermediate or advanced level, comparable to undergraduate courses at the 200 or 300 level at Smith College, distributed in four fields, as follows:

  • Two courses in U.S. history
  • Two courses in European history (since the Fall of Rome), one of which must treat history in the main before 1789, and one of which must treat history in the main after 1789
  • Two courses in ancient Greek and/or Roman history
  • Four courses in non-Western history, normally chosen from the following fields:
    • Chinese or Japanese history
    • Islamic history
    • Latin-American history
    • African history is also recommended, though it is currently not offered on a regular basis in the department.
    • Courses in the history of the Indian subcontinent and of other regions of Asia may also be counted toward the "non-Western" distribution requirement, even though no courses in these fields of history are offered on a regular basis in the department

MAT candidates in history have the option of concentrating two of their four courses in non-Western history in the same field.

Minimal Requirements

Seven history courses (as stated above), distributed in four fields as follows:

  • Two courses in U.S. history
  • Two courses in European history (since the Fall of Rome), as specified above
  • One course in ancient Greek or Roman history
  • Two courses in non-Western history, as specified above

“You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.”

William Faulkner

William Faulker

“History is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.”

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

“History is philosophy teaching by example, and also by warning.”

Lord Bolingbroke

Lord Bolingbroke

Faculty

Jeffrey Ahlman

History

Professor of History; Chair of African Studies Program; Chair of the Department of History

Jeffery Ahlman

Kelly Anderson

Women & Gender Studies

Lecturer in the Study of Women & Gender and Lecturer in Archives

Kelly Anderson

Marnie S. Anderson

History

Barbara Richmond ’40 Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of History

Marnie Anderson

Joshua C. Birk

History

Associate Professor of History; Chair, Classical Languages & Literatures

Joshua Birk

Casey Bohlen

History

Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor in History and Public Discourse

Emeriti

Joan Afferica
L. Clark Seelye Professor Emerita of History

Daniel Gardner
Dwight W. Morrow Professor Emeritus of History

Daniel Horowitz
Mary Huggins Gamble Professor Emeritus

Helen Horowitz
Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of History Emerita

Lester Little
Dwight W. Morrow Professor Emeritus of History

Emeriti (Continued)

Howard Nenner
Roe/Straut Professor Emeritus in the Humanitities (History)

David Newbury
Professor of History, Emeritus

Joachim Stieber
Professor Emeritus of History

R. Jackson Wilson
Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of History

Ann Zulawski
Sydenham C. Parsons Professor of History and Latin American Studies

Research Associates

Sharon Farmer

Dagmar Herzog

John Higgins

Marshall Poe

Marylynn Salmon

Revan Schendler

John Sears

Michael Staub

Kenneth Stow

Robert Weir

Colleen Woods

Kiki Smith leans on a table, surrounded by clothing.

Women’s Clothes and the Stories They Tell

For nearly 50 years, the Historic Clothing Collection has been one of Smith’s hidden gems. Now, it’s finally coming into the light. Read about the collection—including Sylvia Plath ’55’s Girl Scout uniform—Kiki Smith ’71, professor of theatre, has been curating and caring for.

Read Part One Read Part Two

Opportunities

History Prize Submission Cover Sheet
This cover sheet must be included with your prize submission.

The Thomas Corwin Mendenhall Prize

With the support of the Smith College Alumnae Association, this prize is awarded annually for an essay written within the current or the three preceding semesters in a regular history course. Essays originally submitted in seminars, for special studies or as honors theses are not eligible. If an essay was written in response to a specific question or problem posed by an instructor, the stated assignment should be submitted along with the essay.

The essay should indicate for which course and in which semester it was originally written.  Submit a copy via email in pdf format to llettre@cellphonejoys.com by Friday, April 28, clearly identified in the subject line as a submission for the Mendenhall Prize competition.  A student may submit no more than one essay for the competition.

Gladys Lampert and Edward Beenstock Prize

This prize is awarded for the best honors thesis in American studies or American history. Interested students should submit their theses no later than Friday, April 29.  Submit a copy via email in .pdf format to llettre@cellphonejoys.com, and indicate in the subject line that it is for the Gladys Lampert and Edward Beenstock Prize.

Vera Lee Brown Prize

This prize is awarded for excellence in history to a senior majoring in history in the regular course.

The Merle Curti Prize

This prize is awarded for the best piece of writing on any aspect of American civilization.  Interested students should submit a .pdf copy of their writing (one essay per student), no later than Friday, April 28 via email to llettre@cellphonejoys.com.

Hazel L. Edgerly Prize

This prize is awarded to a senior honors history student for distinguished work in that subject.

The history department encourages all students to consider studying abroad, especially in an institution that teaches in a language other than English.

A student planning to study away from Smith during the academic year or during the summer must consult with a departmental adviser concerning rules for granting credit toward the major or the degree. Students must consult with their major adviser for study away both before and after their participation in Junior Year Abroad programs.

In recent years, history majors and minors have studied on Smith’s Junior Year Abroad programs in Paris, Geneva, Florence and Hamburg. They have also studied in consortial programs in Spain, Japan and Mexico.

Students have also studied independently in a variety of other countries:

  • Cairo, Egypt
  • Rabat, Morocco
  • Dakar, Senegal
  • University of Natal at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
  • Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
  • Ben Gurion University, Israel
  • Amman, Jordan
  • Beijing, China
  • Yonsei, Korea
  • Cuba
  • Dominican Republic
  • Australia: Trinity College Parkville, Adelaide, Sydney
  • Otago, New Zealand
  • Vienna, Austria
  • Prague, Czech Republic
  • Copenhagen, Denmark
  • England: Bristol, London School of Economics; University College London; Royal Holloway; King's College London; School of Oriental and African Studies, Oxford; East Anglia; Queen Mary; Westfield Sussex; York
  • Athens, Greece
  • Ireland: Galway, Cork, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Belfast
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Coimbra, Portugal
  • Russia: Yaroslavl, Saint Petersburg
  • Scotland: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Saint Andrews
  • Madrid, Spain
  • New York
  • Paris, France

For more information on these and other programs, visit the Study Abroad Office and consult with seniors who have returned from study elsewhere. As most programs are not designed specifically for history majors, students should consult with their major advisers.

Courses taken abroad must be approved to count toward the history major or minor after they have been completed. This is a separate process from the awarding of overall credit toward a Smith degree. Students present a petition through their adviser, with supporting documentation on the courses. The basic rule is that such courses should be roughly equivalent to a Smith course in reading, writing and class time. For further details on petitioning, please consult an adviser.

The same petition process governs other courses taken outside Smith, including at institutions in the United States during a summer or on an exchange program or during a semester of independent study or before transferring to Smith or before becoming an Ada Comstock Scholar.

Master of Arts in Teaching

Smith College offers a master of arts in teaching degree for those pursuing teaching in elementary, middle or high schools as well as for students wishing to do advanced study in the field of education.

THE MAT PROGRAM

Masters of Art in Teaching

Contact Department of History

Dewey House 106
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063

Phone: 413-585-3679 Email: llettre@cellphonejoys.com

Department Chair: Jeffrey Ahlman
Administrative Assistant: Lyndsay Lettre