This course is a series of workshops that situate particular making techniques that take place in Smith’s many “makerspaces” within social, economic, ecological, historical and cultural contexts. Students connect their making practice to the ways making informs their liberal arts education. This course also serves to introduce students to the faculty and staff who facilitate making at the many different making spaces across the college. S/U only. Enrollment limited to 18.

How have working-class migrant women organized to change the world? This seminar focuses on the transnational labor movement 1880s-1930s through key activist women and their communities in North America, such as Lucy Parsons (African American), Luisa Capetillo (Puerto Rico and the diaspora), Caritina Piña (Mexican Borderlands), and Maria Roda (Italian). How did this generation shape local struggles and create activist networks across many borders? How did they center mutual aid, solidarity, and freedom? What obstacles did they face? Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only.

Examines recent historical controversies over World War II in East Asia, also known as the Asia-Pacific War. Focuses on the Japanese empire and includes studies of government policies, narratives of life on the home front and in the colonies, and the critical transition from a "hot" war to the Cold War. Discussions include war crimes, total war, "Comfort Women," atomic bombs, and biological warfare.   The course is well-suited for juniors and seniors with a background in History or East Asian Studies.

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?

When he died in 2005, a New York Times obituary described African American comedian Richard Pryor as “the groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.” Pryor innovated standup comedy thus inventing new discourses about race and modes of expressing antiracist thinking in the United States.

This course provides declared history majors and intended majors with crucial tools for doing history, including developing historical questions, conducting archival and other primary source research, and building practical skills for delivering original research to an intended audience. In addition, students grapple with pressing questions of the discipline: What is the past’s connection to the present? What is at stake when researching and writing history? How do different historical methods enable critical readings of different sources?

Offered as MES 244 and HST 244. How could revolution be theorized from the MENA region? How might older histories and vocabularies of social change connect 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, the course considers 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.

Twenty-first century scholars argue that race is a constructed social identity that began to coalesce around the seventeenth century. But were they right? This course looks 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?

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.