This presentation will explore the ways in which Puerto Ricans in the diaspora have understood, negotiated, and challenged their location and rights within US political and social structures. Through an analysis of reflections on community life by individuals visiting and/or paying respects in Caribe Funeral Home, the first Puerto Rican-owned funeral home in Chicago, this talk will shed light on how Puerto Ricans navigate the boundaries of inclusion as they gather daily to gossip, reminisce, and enjoy each other’s company – to renew ties to people and place(s). Such commemorations reveal that even in death there is social life and that even as identity is a matter of becoming, so it is deeply historical and political.

Sponsored by the Smith College History Department, Spanish and Portuguese Department, Latin American and Latina/o Studies Program, American Studies Program, Program for the Study of Women and Gender, the Smith College Lecture Committee; UMASS Department of Communication and Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies; Hampshire Colletge Latina/o and Latin American Studies Program; Mount Holyoke Department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

4:30 p.m. - Seelye 106

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University.  She is a leading scholar on Hawaiian indigeneity and sovereignty and has been foremost in conversations about settler colonialism.  She recently completed a week-long visit to Occupied Palestine with four other faculty from U.S. universities (Robin D. G. Kelley, Nikhil Pal Singh, Bill Mullen, and Neferti Tadiar) to meet with Palestinian scholars, university administrators, citizens, activists, and officials in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Haifa.  They also visited the 5,000 person Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. 

Kauanui's first book is Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008).  Her second book project (in-progress), Thy Kindgom Come? The Paradox of Hawaiian Sovereignty, is a critical study on gender and sexual politics and the question of Hawaiian indigeneity in relation to state-centered Hawaiian nationalism.

She is sole producer and host of a public affairs radio program, "Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond," which airs on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Tuesday of each month from 4-5pm EST on WESU, Middletown, CT.  Additionally, she is a member of The Dream Committee, a radio collective that produces an anarchist politics show called "Horizontal Power Hour" (also on WESU), which airs on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month from 4-5pm EDT.  Listen-online: www.wesufm.org.

Lecture:  Teaching the "N-Word:" The Language of Race in the College Classroom

Emily Bernard
Associate Professor of English and ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies
University of Vermont

Monday, February 28

4:30 p.m.

Seelye Hall 201

Emily Bernard talks about the particular experience of being a woman of color and teaching race in predominantly white classrooms.  Among other issues, Professor Bernard explores the pitfalls of navigating the “n-word,” an epithet with a complicated and sometimes contradictory history.

Lecture attendees are encouraged to read Professor Bernard’s essay prior to attending her talk. To read essay click on link below: 

Emily Bernard, "Teaching the N-Word"

Emily Bernard is associate professor of English and ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont.  Her books include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (2001), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  Some of My Best Friends:  Writers on Interracial Friendship (2004) was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age.  Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, a book she co-authored with Deborah Willis, received a 2010 NAACP Image Award.  Her essays have been published in several anthologies and journals, such as American Scholar, Modernism/Modernity, Studies in American Fiction, Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Non-Fiction.  Bernard has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, Yale University, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University.  Her upcoming book, Carl Van Vechten: A Life in Black and White, is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

This event corresponds with upcoming Black History Month events and is sponsored in large part by the Office of Multicultural Affairs as well as History, American Studies, the Department of Education, Afro-American Studies, and the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning.  It is also sponsored by the Lecture Committee.

Depiction of Margaret Laurent Fahmy shooting her husband, Ali Kamil Fahmy

(Source: al-Lata'if al-Musawwara 30 July 1923)

Spring 2011 Lecture Series

"MORALITY, WORKING-CLASS RADICALISM, AND POLITICAL ELITES:  NEW TRENDS IN THE STUDY OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST"

First lecture in the series:

Lecture:  "A Euro-Egyptian Murder Mystery: Media Sensation and the Making of Moral Order in 1920’s Egypt"

Shaun T. Lopez
Assistant Professor of History
University of Washington, Seattle

Thursday, March 3, 2011
4:30 p.m.
Hillyer - Graham Auditorium
Smith College

This talk will examine the media firestorm that followed the 1923 murder of Egyptian playboy Ali Fahmy by his French wife in a London hotel. Margaret Laurent-Fahmy’s defense in a London courtroom, based on powerful cultural narratives about women’s ooppression in the East, engendered literally hundreds of editorials in both the European and Egyptian Press. Egyptian commentators linked broader concerns about moral order in Egypt directly to the murder and trial, and placed narratives of the case against the backdrop of Egypt’s struggle against British control of Egyptian affairs. In the wake of the case, popular concerns about moral propriety coalesced into a national moral discourse constructed directly in response to criticisms leveled by European commentators.

Sponsored by the Departments of History, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Government, Italian, Philosophy, the Programs in African Studies, Middle East Studies, Study of Women and Gender, Third World Development Studies, the Global Studies Center, the Betty Hamady Sams '57 and James F. Sams Fund, and the Smith College Lecture Committee.

Spring 2011 Lecture Series

"MORALITY, WORKING-CLASS RADICALISM, AND POLITICAL ELITES:  NEW TRENDS IN THE STUDY OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST"

Second lecture in the series:

Lecture: "The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism 1860-1914"

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi
Associate Professor of History
Northeastern University, Boston

Wednesday, March 30, 2011
4:30 pm
Neilson Browsing Room
Smith College

This lecture will explore the wide variety of radical leftist ideas that began circulating in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, among segments of the populations of Eastern Mediterranean cities, especially in Beirut, Cairo and Alexandria, then among the most culturally and politically important cities of the Arab Ottoman world. These ideas, which were selective adaptations of socialist and anarchist principles, included specific calls for social justice, workers' rights, mass secular education, and anticlericalism, and more broadly a general challenge to the existing social and political order at home and abroad. Radicals formed networks that were connected informationally, politically, and organizationally, to international and internationalist movements and organizations that sought to promote leftist ideas and implement radical projects in various corners of the world.

Sponsored by the Department of History, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Government, Italian, Philosophy, the Programs in African Studies, Middle East Studies, Study of Women and Gender, Third World Development Studies, the Global Studies Center, the Betty Hamady Sams '57 and James F. Sams Fund, and the Smith College Lecture Committee.

Spring 2011 Lecture Series

"MORALITY, WORKING-CLASS RADICALISM, AND POLITICAL ELITES:  NEW TRENDS IN THE STUDY OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST"

Third lecture in the series:

Lecture:  "The New Nexus of Power between the Political and Economic Elites in the Arab World"

Bassam Haddad
Assistant Professor of Political Science
George Mason University

Monday, April 4, 2011
4:30 p.m.
Neilson Browsing Room
Smith College

While dominant research agendas related to the Middle East are preoccupied with war, peace, security, authoritarianism, reform,  identity/ethnic/sectarian politics, and political Islam, slow-moving structural factors like social formation (and reformation) receive short shrift-until, that is, strategic, institutional, and cultural variables cease to yield as much explanatory power. This presentation will identify and analyze the new socioeconomic groups and strata who will most certainly have a disproportionate influence on shaping the future of Middle Eastern societies. Haddad will discuss who these individuals/groups are, and from where they hail. What brought them to positions of power, privilege, and wealth, and what is keeping them there? What are their dreams and aspirations, desires and ambitions? What do their social, political, and economic worldviews look like? And how do they differ from their predecessors in relating to the local, regional, and international factors and contexts?

Sponsored by the Departments of History, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Government, Italian, Philosophy, the Programs in African Studies, Middle East Studies, Study of Women and Gender, Third World Development Studies, the Global Studies Center, the Betty Hamady Sams '57 and James F. Sams Fund, and the Smith College Lecture Committee.

Lecture: sPEAKING TRUTH TO BLACK POWER: HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF BLACK NATIONALISM AND THE LEFT

Tuesday, April 12
5:00 p.m., Hillyer-Graham Hall Auditorium,
Brown Fine Arts Center

Brenda Gayle Plummer
Professor of History and
Afro-American Studies
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Presentation of the Major and History Fair

Monday, November 1, 2010

4:15 p.m.
Seelye 207

Refreshments will be provided

Lecture: Scriptural Conflict, Scriptural Community: Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Tuesday, April 20, 4:30 p.m., Hillyer-Graham Hall Auditorium, Brown Fine Arts Center

David Nirenberg
Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta
Professor of Medieval History and
Social Thought
University of Chicago

Inter-religious conflict is once again at center stage of our geo-political consciousness, and with it all sorts of questions about the role of scripture in that conflict.  Do the respective claims of Jewish, Christian, or Islamic scriptures contribute to the violence between the various communities that read them?  Do they, on the contrary, provide a basis for solidarity between the three Abrahamic religions?  Or is it that one of these scriptural traditions is more tolerant than the others, or that one is more intrinsically violent?  Because such questions try to separate the violent from the tolerant potentials of scriptural communities, they not only fail to make sense of scriptural interpretation, but also themselves become part of the politics of conflict, emerging in venues as disparate as the Hamas Charter and the writings of Pope Benedict XVI.  This talk will focus on passages within the scriptures--with some emphasis on the Qur'an--that explicitly take up the problem of interpretive conflict.  It will look at how these passages have been read at specific historical moments--medieval and modern--in order to propose some new questions about the dynamics of conflict and community among the "Peoples of the Book."

The History Department Presents a

Strictly Student Movie Night! 

Saturday, February 27, 7:00 p.m.
Dewey Common Room

Please join the History Liaisons for a film screening of Seven Years in Tibet.  This event is open to History Majors and Minors and any student enrolled in a History course during the spring semester.  

All are welcome!    Snacks will be provided!

Lecture:  "What is Russian Orientalism?  Reflections on the Relevance of Edward Said."    

Tuesday, February 2, 4:00 p.m.,
Dewey Common Room

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye teaches Russian and Inner Asian history at Brock University in Canada. His research interests focus on Imperial Russian intellectual, cultural and diplomatic topics. His first book, Toward the Rising Sun: Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), examines the interplay between East Asian foreign policy and ideas in St. Petersburg at the turn of the 20th century. Schimmelpenninck's other publications include a volume co-edited with Bruce Menning, Reforming the Tsar's Army (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003), another co-edited volume with John Steinberg and others, The Russo-Japanese War: World War Zero (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), as well as articles about Russian Orientology, Asian Russia, tsarist diplomacy, Sino-Russian relations, Russian military intelligence, and other topics. He is currently writing a book about Russian perceptions of Asia under contract with Yale University Press.

The talk is sponsored by the Five College Slavic Seminar.

Lecture: "The Black Republic: The Influence of the Haitian Revolution on Black Political Consciousness, 1817-1861"

Monday, February 8, 4:30 p.m.,
Neilson Library Browsing Room

Leslie Alexander, Assoicate Professor of History, Ohio State University. Dr. Alexander is a specialist in African American and American history.  Her first monograph, entitled African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861, explores Black culture, identity, and political activism during the early national and antebellum eras.  Her current research project, tentatively titled "The Cradle of Hope: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth Century." is an exploration of early African American foreign policy. 

Leslie Alexander, The Black Republic

Rachmaninoff Centennial

November 6-7, 2009

Smith College marks the centennial of Sergei Rachmaninoff's first public performance in the United States, presented in College Hall in 1909.  Events celebrate both Rachmaninoff and Sophie Satin, his cousin, sister-in-law and biographer, who was a member of the Smith faculty from 1943 to 1955.

Friday, Nov. 6  

Rachmaninoff: The Musician Behind the Brand Name

Francis Crociata, Rachmaninoff Biographer

4:15 p.m. Neilson Library Browsing Room

Rachmaninoff in Songs and Dances: Vocal and Instrumental Music Performed by Faculty and Students

8:00 p.m., Sweeney Concert Hall

Saturday, Nov. 7

Sophie Satin: Life and Work

Joan Afferica, Professor Emerita of History, and C. John Burk, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences

4:15 p.m., Neilson Library Browsing Room

Dedication of Rachmaninoff Bronze

Carol Christ, President; Jane Bryden, Professor of Music; Vladimir Tropp, Pianist and Donor

7:30 p.m., Sweeney Concert Hall

Concert: A Program of Compositions of Gergei Rachmaninoff

Vladimir Tropp, Gnesin Russian Academy of Music and Moscow Conservatory

8:00 p.m., Sweeney Concert Hall

*************

November 4-December 23

Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sophie Satin at Smith

Exhibition of Photographs and Memorabilia

Morgan Gallery, Neilson Library Entrance

For more information and related events, visit www.smith.edu/rachmaninoff

Presentation of the Major and History Fair

Monday, November 2, 4:30 p.m.
Dewey Common Room

Lecture: "The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China"

Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Neilson Browsing Room
Joan Judge, Associate Professor, Division of Humanities and School of Women's Studies, Founders College, York University

Professsor Judge is a renowned scholar of modern Chinese history who focuses on women's and gender history. Her books on modern print culture and women's history as well as her articles have made outstanding contributions to the field of modern East Asian History and women's history. Her lecture will also complement the offerings of the History Department in women's history, providing a view of a non-Western country.

Lecture: "The Pinochet Effect: Secret Documents and the Pursuit of Justice in Latin America"

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 5 p.m., Neilson Browsing Room
Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University

Lecture: African-American Activism v. the "Black Swan:" (Mis-) Representing the Race in the 1850s

Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Graham Hall
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Presidential Post-doctoral Fellow, University of California Los Angeles Law School

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor will join Smith College, History Department in Fall 2009.

Lecture: "Obama, Africom, and the Mitilarization of U.S. Policy Toward Africa"

Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 7:30 p.m., Graham Hall
Daniel Volman, Director of the African Security Research Project, Washington, DC

Daniel Volman is the author of numerous articles on US security policy and African security issues. His work has recently appeared in such journals as The New African, The Review of African Political Economy and Third World Quarterly.

Symposium Honoring Neal Salisbury: "Native American History: Current and Future Directions"

Thursday, March 5, 2009, 9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m., Neilson Browsing Room
and Friday, March 6, 2009, 9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., Neilson Browsing Room

Symposium Program (PDF) >

Lecture: "The Challenges of Governance in Africa"

Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 7:30 p.m., Neilson Library Room
George Nzongola-Ntalaja, Former Official, United Nations Development Program (UNDP); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Film Screening: Detained: The New Bedford Immigration Raid

Thursday, February 5, 2009, 4 p.m., Stoddard G2
Screening followed by a discussion with filmmaker Jenny Alexander, workers who were detained, and allies, including Alexandra Pineros Shields, Corinn Williams, Director of the New Bedford Community Economic Development Center.

On March 6, 2007, U.S. immigration officials raided a New Bedford, MA factory that makes vests and backpacks for U.S. soldiers. Many of the 361 immigrants who were detained were women with small children, from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Portugal and Cape Verde.