Entangled Lives

Entangled Lives: Trees and Forests in Contemporary Literature and Art is a Smith College First-Year Seminar that was first offered in Fall 2024. For their final projects, students interviewed individuals from the local community whose daily work is closely tied to arboreal life. The following articles are based on these interviews and crafted in a multi-step peer-writing process.

The goal of the project was to add facets to our understanding of the Massachusetts landscape, learn about the professional lives of people with a passion for trees, and explore their attitudes towards the more-than-human world. Accessible only via Smith credentials.  Instructor: Susanne Fuchs

The Plath Conservatory

The Plath Conservatory. In a Spring 2023 Anthropology course, Smith College students majoring in Biological Science, English, Environmental Science and Policy, Computer Science, Anthropology, Government, and more gathered together to investigate the possibility that conservatories are relevant to our understanding of the human condition, focusing on Sylvia Plath’s (‘55) botanical encounters at Lyman in the 1950s. Student essays examine one plant species that features in Plath’s work, accounting for its ecology, geography, and taxonomy; the symbolic work it does in Plath’s writing; and the historical context in which Plath came to know it. Instructor: Colin Hoag, Anthropology

Teaching Romance Languages

Teaching Romance Languages. Students in FRN/ITL/POR/SPN299 explored the resources for language learning in Neilson Library to develop multimedia online resources for language instruction in Italian, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. Student collaborated on the design of a resource website and created multimedia learning resources for different languages. Accessible only via Smith credentials. Instructor: Simone Gugliotta, Education & Child Study + Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French