Course Description:

 Colloquium: Methods of Inquiry in Africana Studies is designed to introduce students to how we do the work of Africana Studies. Through study of a single topic, students will be introduced to and employ methods of inquiry that speak to the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of the field of Africana Studies.

 Focused on Blackness and water (broadly conceived), this course will tend to Tiffany Lethabo King’s claim in The Black Shoals, Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies that “Water, most often the ocean, has been Black studies’ most faithful metaphor”:

                         Land is not the traditional element used to analogize Black flux or

                        think about dynamic, fluid, and ever moving Black diasporic subjectivity.

                        Rarely does land evoke the kind of flexibility, elusiveness, and trickster-like

                        qualities that Black diasporic life symbolizes in the Western Hemisphere.

                        Water, most often the ocean, has been Black studies’ most faithful metaphor.

 Across eight framing units, students will read/view/listen to works by Black scholars, writers, and creatives that showcase the ways in which Africana Studies, in praxis, interfaces with water (broadly conceived). Once introduced to a variety of methods in Africana Studies, students will then apply those methods to a selection of corresponding texts/media on Blackness and water (broadly conceived). Framing units include but are not limited to Black Atlantic Oceanics as Archive, African Atlantic Water Cultures, The Liquid of Black Freedoms, and The Oceanic Age of Blackness.

This course is designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of Native American and Indigenous Studies. This course looks at the diverse histories of Indigenous nations across North America, as well as histories of shared experiences with ongoing colonialism, legacies of resistance and connections to place. The class focuses on Indigenous perspectives, intellectual traditions and critical interventions across time through the work of historians, anthropologists, philosophers, literary scholars, Indigenous knowledge keepers, poets, writers and activists. This course is required for a Native American and Indigenous Studies focus for American Studies majors.

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.

What is the relationship between objects and ideas? How do objects both individually and collectively convey patterns of everyday life? This seminar draws upon the disciplines of history, art and architectural history, landscape studies, anthropology, archaeology, and cultural geography to examine the material culture of 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, archaeology, furniture, textiles, art, metals, ceramics, foodways, and domestic environments can be interpreted as cultural documents and as historical evidence. We will explore objects not only as finished products but also the processes by which they were made and the makers who produced them. NOTE: The class will meet at Historic Deerfield in the Bartels Seminar Room in the Flynt Center of Early New England Life unless otherwise noted.

This course is an introduction to major themes in social and cultural anthropology. We will examine the concepts, methods, and theories anthropologists employ to understand the unity and diversity of human experiences across different regional contexts, with an emphasis on social, cultural, political, and economic systems of inequality. 

Perhaps you are taking this course because you are interested in becoming an anthropology major. Perhaps you are considering pursuing a career in anthropological research. If this is your situation, this course is a great place to start. But for many others – maybe even a majority of you – this might be the first or only anthropology course you will take at Smith – though I hope you will be inspired to take more! By the end of this course, you will learn what it means to “think anthropologically” in ways that I hope can serve you in any career path you choose and in your everyday life, at Smith and beyond.

To “think anthropologically” is much more than a specialized course of study; it is a way of observing and understanding the diverse practices, ideas, and sentiments through which human beings build their daily lives in an ever-changing world. Thinking anthropologically is a mode of asking critical questions about what human beings share in common and what makes us distinct from each other. Thinking anthropologically means learning to pay attention to conditions, perspectives, and structures of inequality that are often taken for granted or invisible. It gives us a conceptual tool-box for analyzing deeply complex topics like culture, race, and gender in more critical and nuanced ways. 

The cornerstone of anthropological research is ethnographic fieldwork, which is a qualitative method based on long-term participatory observation among particular groups of people in specific places. Such an immersive, fine-grained approach to research allows anthropologists to analyze how ordinary people experience the pressing challenges of our time, from issues of racism to histories of colonialism, to forced displacement, to climate change, to economic crisis. 

Thinking anthropologically also means critically engaging with the discipline’s origins and the fraught histories of colonialism, racism, and inequality in which anthropology — like all modern academic disciplines — is embedded. In the first few weeks of the semester, we will trace anthropology’s intellectual roots in 19th- and early 20th-century debates in Europe and North America about evolution and the “scientific” study of human diversity. We will then consider how anthropological research has critically evolved in relation to this history. Throughout the course, we will ask: What texts and topics are considered the “classics” of anthropology, and what does this exclude? What aspects of the classic anthropological enterprise of documenting cultural differences should be retained, and what should be abandoned or rethought? And what does it mean to “decolonize” anthropology today?

Final Research Project Statement

For your Thursday meeting, 9/23, you are to bring a written draft of your research proposal. I will not collect this draft - but it should contain notes, ideas, and questions. You should come prepared to discuss what topic, site, cultural area, etc. you have decided to research and write about. Our meeting time is intended to hone your ideas as you have developed them thus far; please come prepared.

The Research Statement which is due on midnight, Thursday, September 23 on Moodle, should clearly state, in one or two paragraphs (about 250 words) what you propose to research. Avoid generalizations and vague statements, be specific in what you intend to research. Focus on a specific aspect of a given site or culture area, e.g., Çatalhöyük spanned 1,100 years and so it would be important to decide what period you wanted to examine (Early, Middle or Late). Likewise, decide what aspect of life at Çatalhöyük you would you research - health and disease, diet, settlement patterns, ritual and symbolism, gender, domestic plants and/or animals, etc. The field is limitless! I suggest choosing a topic you are interested in learning more about.

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Please stay tuned for where our meetings will take place; I am still hoping to meet under the pagoda, with a sweater and a thermos of tea if necessary! 

Thank you,

Professor Mangan

As people around the world flee ecological, political, and economic disasters in growing numbers, it has become a basic truism to say that we are living in an age of “migration crisis.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated recently that over 84 million people around the world are living in conditions of forced displacement, which is the highest number on record since World War II. These numbers look much larger if we include labor migrants: between 1970 and 2012, the number of transnational migrants worldwide doubled to 232 million. 

In this course we will examine the art and architecture of Ancient Greece and its historical and social context, from the end of the Neolithic through the domination of Greece by Rome (ca. 3500-168 BCE), concentrating on an array of settlements, cemeteries, and ritual sites. We track the development of the Greek city-state and the increasing power of the Greeks in the Mediterranean, culminating in the major diaspora of Greek culture accompanying the campaigns of Alexander the Great and his followers. Our approach will be broadly chronological, and we will focus on sites that have been selected for the variety of archaeological remains recovered and for their importance in the history of Greece (for example, Athens, Olympia, etc.). The emphasis of the course is on the contextual examination of Greek material culture, and how this changed over the course of the period under consideration. We will also stress the interconnections between the disparate parts of the Greek world and the idea of a unified Greek culture. Ongoing and recent archaeological work in Greece is also integrated into this course.

To step inside a medieval cathedral is still a profound experience. Nowadays, their majestic heights and elegant forms are objects of quiet contemplation. Yet medieval buildings were seldom still or silent, and their audiences were rarely disinterested observers. This course surveys the architecture of Europe and the Mediterranean between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries. Together, we will explore the development of the distinctive forms of medieval architecture in both the East and the West—from churches and monasteries to mosques, synagogues, cities, and palaces—and how these spaces were activated in contexts of ritual, liturgy, and performance.

DRAWING I begins with the fundamental skill of “seeing” through drawing, using a range of media to translate the three-dimensional world around you into two dimensions. This course is based in experience and observation, exploring a range of techniques and media to understand the basic formal vocabularies and conceptual issues in drawing; subject matter will include objects, landscape, architecture, and the human figure. You will be assessed through weekly sketchbook assignments and critiques, and portfolio review. Midterm and final projects will encourage creative exploration using the skills introduced in class.

Important links: 

• BIO354 - Spring 2026 Syllabus
• Extension request form

Instructor: 

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BIO 507 Seminar: Navigating a master’s degree in Biological Sciences (2 Credits)

This seminar provides the opportunity to meet and collaborate with the other students in the BIO MS program, gain experience describing and sharing planned thesis research with others, and develop professional skills related to crafting research proposals, reading and critiquing scientific literature, and public presentation.  This course is required for graduate students and must be taken both years. Restrictions: BIO graduate students only. Instructor permission required.

Welcome to the CEEDS Summer Internship!

• Becca Malloy, Assistant Director of Sustainability, Wright Hall 007, office (413) 585-3538 OR cell (413) 336-3678
• Molly Neu '25
• Jena Kim '27

Major goals for our work this summer:

• Develop communications materials for new and returning students about starting the school year sustainably and the new SmithCycle Thrift

• Develop multimedia training materials for new EcoRep skill development program

• Draw out key messages from previous Smith student research to track and communicate students’ impacts on Smith’s sustainability

• Sort and clean move-out donations (dorm decor, linens, and school supplies) and organize and display items in preparation for SmithCycle Thrift to launch in August 

• Support the branding and communications of CEEDS’ Sustainable Events Guide

• Other sustainability projects which may include greenhouse gas tracking, program development, mapping, communications, data management or programming

Tuesdays & Thursdays 7:00-7:50 pm, Young Library Basement

The goals of this course are:

1. To develop your quantitative skills, enabling you to confidently approach word problems in chemistry. These problems will entail unit conversions, predicting the amount of products and reactants anticipated in various chemical reactions, and preparation of solutions and mixtures.

2. To build community with your fellow chemists. My hope is that our in-class group work and collaboration will give you skills to succeed in CHM 111 and future science courses.