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Phone: (413) 585-3533
Office: 10 Prospect #104; Hours: on sabbatical 2008-09
E-mail: mackelsb@email.smith.edu
 I did my undergraduate work at Radcliffe College, receiving
a degree in the interdisciplinary program in Social Studies in 1968, and continued
on for graduate work in Politics at Princeton University, from which I received a
Ph.D. in 1976. I joined the Smith faculty in 1972, and was appointed Five College
Fortieth Anniversary Professor in 2006. I have also taught occasionally at Hampshire
College and at UMass Amherst, and spent a semester (two terms) on a faculty exchange
at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Sussex. I have spent leave
and/or sabbatical time as a Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College
(1983-84), a Faculty Associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University
(1983-84), a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women at Columbia
University (1987-88), a Visiting Fellow at the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture
and Politics of Democracy at Rutgers University (1992-1993), and as a member of the
interdisciplinary Human Security Seminar co-sponsored by CUNY Graduate Center and
the National Center for Research on Women, 2003-04.
My main intellectual interests
are in what I would loosely term "applied democratic
theory." At Smith, I teach courses on urban politics, democratic theory, and
feminist theory, in addition to Government 100 and occasional courses in the Women's
Studies Program. I have published a number of articles and a book, Free Women
of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, (which has
been translated into Spanish and Italian, and is in process of being translated for
publication in France) on Spanish anarchism in the period before and during the Spanish
Civil War. Other writing has focused on women's community activism in both the U.S.
and in international contexts, on gender and public policy, feminist and democratic
theory, changing understandings of families, and on women in Jewish communities.
In recent years, I have been increasingly involved in exploring the relationship
between gender and citizenship: how incorporating the study of activism and of the
variety of ways people (especially women, in their local communities) actually participate
in public life might change the ways we think about and understand politics.
During the 2000-01
academic year, I co-directed an interdisciplinary project, through the Kahn Institute,
on "Community Activism and the Academy." The project
aimed to support the work of faculty members and students at Smith who are studying
social movements and social activism, and to increase ties between Smith and local
community activists. It sponsored an on-going seminar on social activism for faculty
and student fellows, organized public symposia, and hosted social activists for short-term
residencies at Smith. During spring break, the students and many faculty members
visited the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana, to study activism there. In 2005-06, I
participated again in a Kahn Institute seminar, this time on "City Lives and
City Life."
I live in Northampton , where I enjoy gardening, cooking,
and hiking. Whenever possible, I try, also, to maintain an active involvement in
a variety of progressive, Jewish, and feminist organizations. In recent years, I
have served as a member, and am now chair, of the Northampton Housing Partnership,
a City board with the responsibility to educate the community and advise the Mayor
on issues of housing affordability. In that capacity, I also serve as a member of
the Sustainable Northampton Steering Committee, the group overseeing Northampton
's current long-term planning process. In addition, I am a committed fan of books
on tape, which entertain me during frequent trips to New York City .
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