Is Jihad Meant as Devotion to God by the Sword?

A Smith scholar sees it as an obligation to explore how the concept of jihad came to legitimize Muslims fighting other Muslims, something proscribed as sinful in the early Islamic tradition.

Rethinking the End of Our Planet

As an astronomer and a paleontologist posit their predictions for the end of the planet, they agree on one point: humankind can subvert catastrophic events that would mean death for life on Earth.

In Modern Drama, Why Are the Characters So Often Entrapped?

Theater is supposed to tell us something. The play, through the plot, is designed to reveal to us—the audience—an element of truth. Or is it?

Digital Project Brings Images to Scholars

When a trove of unusual color slides documenting Shinto festivals in Kyoto, Japan, recently surfaced, Smith College faculty and staff quickly took steps to make sure these cultural records wouldn’t be lost to the ages.

Audio: Patricia DeBartolo on Perfectionism

Setting high goals for oneself is often considered a more positive aspect of perfectionism. But is it? An Academic Minute with Professor of Psychology Patricia DiBartolo.

Examining Our Relationship to Trash

Trash. Rubbish. Garbage. Refuse. Junk. These words and others like them, such familiar parts of our vernacular, hint at our nuanced and often conflicted relationship with the concept of waste.

Unlocking the Basics of Life With Proteomics

When scientists and entomologists recently reported a breakthrough in identifying the infections that may be killing honeybee colonies, the director of Smith’s Center for Proteomics took note.

What Confucius Says is Useful to China’s Rulers

Confucius, the venerable Sage who lived in the 6th century BC, is enjoying a 21st century revival. His rehabilitators? The Chinese Communist Party.

Uncovering the Psychopathology of Hoarding

For compulsive hoarders, however, the collecting and saving of things — and consequent clutter — can be the cause of great suffering.

Understanding the Impact of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on Forest Ecology

There's nothing as inviting as the cool shade of a stand of hemlock trees stretching out along a forested trail on a sunny day.

Where Academics Fuse with the Great Outdoors

Objects Are Documents

Karen Kukil, associate curator of special collections at Smith, will teach Smith students how to edit correspondence from the Sylvia Plath Collection — including Plath's unpublished letters written to her Smith friends.

The Sylvia Plath Collection
The Virginia Woolf Collection

Smith the Site — and Subject — of Summer Research

The jitters among undergraduates presenting the progress of summer research were evident.

Smith Leads Peers in NSF Funding

In the past 10 years Smith has won more National Science Foundation (NSF) research funding — more than $14 million — than any other select liberal arts college in the nation. And that is not a coincidence.

Undergrads with Research Experience More Likely to Earn Advanced Degrees

Summer research fellows had nearly twice the odds of completing an advanced degree as students who did not participate in the program.

Not in the Doghouse: Pets an Academic Subject

From YouTube videos of cat antics to late-night stupid pet tricks, pets are pervasive in our culture. Yet in academia, pets have long been shunned to the proverbial doghouse. Until now.

Education Doesn't Stop at the End of Class

Friday afternoons for Christine Woodbury are all about time. Literally. She and about a dozen Smith professors and students gather each week to talk, ponder, inquire and maybe even argue about the fourth dimension.

Professor Recognized for Groundbreaking Mathematical Research

Ileana Streinu was honored by the American Mathematical Society for her algorithmic solution of the “carpenter’s rule problem.”