SSC-MS-00535
The Voices of Feminism Oral History Project documents the persistence and diversity of organizing for women in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. Narrators include labor, peace, and anti-racism activists; artists and writers; lesbian rights advocates; grassroots anti-violence and anti-poverty organizers; and women of color reproductive justice leaders. Interviews average 5-6 hours and cover childhood, personal life, and political work.
The Voices of Feminism Archival Development Project, funded by the Ford Foundation from 2002 to 2008, aimed to bring race, class, and sexual diversity to the holdings of the Sophia Smith Collection.
SSC-MS-00406
The Population and Reproductive Health Oral History Project, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, includes accounts of individuals throughout the world who have made important contributions to the field. Reflecting the voices and perspectives of advocates, communication specialists, lawyers, managers, physicians, researchers, social workers and others, the series addresses the historical period 1965-2005.
SSC-MS-00722
The Asian American Reproductive Justice Oral History Project was conceived and conducted by Juhee Kwon while a student at Brown University. Her diesire was to examine reproductive justice through a lens shaped by the history and identity of Asian American women. For the project, she interviewed Asian American women who have been active in the Reproductive Justice movement since the 1980s.
SSC-MS-00533
Series of oral histories of five notable women entitled A Woman's Legacy: Five Women Who Made a Difference, published by Women's Forum West Legacy Foundation (San Francisco, Calif, 2004).
SSC-MS-00756
This collection includes oral histories of women and gender non-conforming rock musicians prominent from the late twentieth century to the present. Interview narrators were chosen by Tanya Pearson. Interviews are available as videorecordings; and transcripts are available for some interviews. The remaining transcripts will be available after 2025.
The Women of Rock Oral History Project began as an independent study project by Tanya Pearson while she was at Smith College. During that time, and since graduating, Pearson has collected the stories of musicians who rose to prominence before the advent of modern web-based tools for documenting their lives and work. This project is ongoing.
SSC-MS-00416
The Schlesinger-Rockefeller oral history project documents women in health services, maternal and childcare, family planning, marriage counseling, and sex education. Collection consists of five transcripts of oral history interviews conducted by James W. Reed, 1973-74.
SSC-MS-00436
Two oral histories of birth control advocate and physician Edris Rice-Wray, who founded Mexico's first family planning clinic in Mexico City.
SSC-MS-00413
Oral history interview of Cheri Appel, M.D., physician and early birth control worker primarily discussing her work and Margaret Sanger. Interview conducted by Ellen Chesler in 1989.
SSC-MS-00641
An Activist Life Oral History Project is a collection of life histories of women who have dedicated their lives to social and political activism. The project documents both the diversity and the persistence of women's activism, as organizers and as cultural workers, in a variety of social movements such as women's health, economic justice, LGBT liberation, peace, education, and environmental sustainability. Narrators include educators and academics, musicians, writers, and artists, as well as community and religious leaders. They come from a variety of class, ethnic, racial, social, and geographic backgrounds. Interviews cover childhood and growing up experiences; education and employment; activism and politics; family, identity, relationships and community.
Interviews were conducted by Smith College students in Kelly Anderson's Smith College course "Women's Activism and Oral History" in the Fall of 2008.
SSC-MS-00204
Ann Miller Morin gathered information, including oral histories, from 36 "female chiefs of mission, from the first one appointed in 1933 to the 44th appointed in 1983." The Women Ambassadors Project resulted in a book entitled Her Excellency, published in 1995.
SSC-MS-00423
Living U.S. Women's History: Voices From the Field, 1960-2000: An Oral History Archive is part of a larger project: The Emergence of U.S. Women's History, 1972-1997: A Model for the Gender Equity Movement. The purpose of the larger project is to document the history "of people who have worked on gender equity in schools, universities and university groups." The project was conceived and conducted by Mary Logan Rothschild, Professor of History and Women's Studies at Arizona State University, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
SSC-MS-00417
This collection includes oral history interviews with important figures in the field of social work, conducted circa 1970-1998.
SSC-MS-00696
The collection includes interviews with individuals who made "unrivaled contributions to Indian parental and community control of Indian education." There are audio recordings, abstracts and partial transcripts most interviews. A large percentage of the interviews are with women, many of whom were involved in the Indian rights movement, including Rebecca Adamson who was the first field coordinator for the coalition (note: Rebecca Adamson's papers are also housed in the Sophia Smith Collection). According to oral historian Jerry Reynolds, 46 of the 97 interviewees were women. "Women played a decisive role in the Coalition's accomplishments both as committed parents and political catalysts."
SSC-MS-00524
This oral history collection consists of fourteen interviews conducted by Tamar Carroll for her dissertation on women's community activism in New York City, circa 1955-1995 for the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Included are interviews with activists involved in Mobilization For Youth, one of the country's first anti-poverty agencies founded in 1957 on New York City's Lower East Side to combat juvenile delinquency.
SSC-MS-00412
The interviews reveal the life stories of this group of Italian-American women in all their variety, from their experiences as immigrants (including their continuing ties to Italy), to their family responsibilities, education, and above all, work experiences in the United States. Ida Rescia captured the centrality of work--for most of them both within and outside of the home: "...I arrived on Thursday, Monday I went to work and...I always continued to work...." The interviews also document the importance of the Ausonia Club and the life-long friendships maintained within it.
SSC-MS-00556
This oral history project was undertaken by Colomba Furio-Spigner as part of the research for her Ph.D. dissertation, "Immigrant Women and Industry: A Case Study: The Italian Immigrant Women and the Garment Industry, 1880-1950" (New York University, 1979). The collection consists of nine oral history interviews of Italian immigrants (primarily women) who worked in the U.S. garment industry from 1880 to 1950.
SSC-MS-00496
Oral history interviews with two Italian American women, Rose Villano and Carolina (Carrie) Golzio involved in the Paterson, N.J., Silk Workers' Strike, 1913.
SSC-MS-00415
The oral history transcript of Regina Lederer were privately printed, along with biographical notes, obituary, eulogies, and photocopies of photographs of Lederer and her family, entitled Old World to New: Omi's Stories; an oral history of Regina Lederer (1984). Regina Berger Lederer was born June 29, 1895 in Vienna, Austria. She was a soprano soloist with the Vienna Opera. In 1939, after the Nazi invasion, she and her husband, Theodore Lederer, and their son left for Italy, then the United States. She resumed her singing career in New York City and later she worked for a knitting firm until she retired in 1972.
SSC-MS-00566
The Women at War Oral History Project was conceived and carried out by socioligist and oral historian, Revan Schendler, and playwright/director, John Hadden in 2006. Its purpose was to give voice to women veterans from Western Massachusetts who had served in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Schendler conducted oral histories with six women veterans, and she and Hadden wrote and produced a play based on the interviews called "Women at War: Bringing the Voices of Military Women to the Stage," which was performed at the Northampton (Mass.) Center for the Arts in 2006.
SSC-MS-00419
The Voices of American Homemakers Oral History was conducted by the National Extension Homemakers Council Oral History Project, 1981-82. The collection contains 182 oral histories of American Homemakers.
SSC-MS-00766
The Elder Women's Oral History Project oral histories includes interview transcripts, audio recordings (in the form of one cassette tape, twelve CDs, and digital files), photographs of all participants, and, in the case of one participant who passed away before the end of the project, materials from a funeral and correspondence with the family.
SSC-MS-00669
This oral history project began in 1997 when Arden Eversmeyer started working with women she knew who were ill and dying in her community of Houston, Texas. Next, she began collecting stories from friends as she traveled. The project came to be called the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project and expanded to include the life stories of lesbians 70 and older (i.e., those who were born in the early years of the 20th century). Twenty two of the interviews were published in the book A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories by Arden Eversmeyer and Margaret Purcell (2009).
The Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project includes interview transcripts and audio recordings (cassette tapes and digital files); plus related correspondence, releases, and photographs (primarily color photocopies). Some interviewee files contain additional biographical material, writings, speeches, and memorabilia. Some administrative records of the project are also included.
SSC-MS-00661
Documenting Lesbian Lives is a collection of life histories with people who consider themselves to be (presently or at one time) lesbian, queer or bisexual. The project provides a complex and nuanced collective story of American lesbian history and experience. Narrators include grassroots activists and political organizers; educators and academics; musicians, writers, and artists; as well as community and religious leaders. They come from a variety of class, ethnic, racial, social, and geographic backgrounds. Interviews cover childhood and growing up experiences; education and employment; activism and politics; family, identity, relationships and community.
Interviews were conducted by Smith College students in Kelly Anderson's "Documenting Lesbian Lives" course beginning in the spring of 2010.
CA-MS-01201
Oral history interviews with Smith College students and alumnae who identify as trans and/or non-binary, conducted by Sam Davis (Class of 2017) for his documentary project entitled "In Our Own Words: On Being Trans at Smith." The interviews explore how these trans students fit into Smith's vision of "women for the world"; how are trans students supported or unsupported by the administration and their fellow students; and issues of erasure, hypervisibility, transphobia, views about trans students within all levels of the institution, and the ongoing debate of who does and does not "belong" at Smith.
CA-MS-00301
The Alumnae Oral History Project consists of interviews conducted by oral history students with alumnae returning to Smith for reunion weekends between the years 2010 and 2017.
The Alumnae Oral History Project was funded by the President's Office and the College Archives and coordinated by Kelly Anderson. Students from the Archives Concentration and Anderson's classes in oral history conducted the interviews with alumnae over reunion weekend in May from 2010 to 2017 in the Alumnae Gymnasium, the home of the Smith College Archives.
CA-MS-00353
The Friends of the Smith College Library was formed in March 1942 to assist the Smith College Library's collection of material. In the 1977 fall meeting of the Committee of the Friends, the Oral history project was approved, and Gertrude Smith (1928) Professor Emeritus of Music, coordinated the task of recording "the recollections and reminiscence of retired members of the faculty and administrative staff who live in the Northampton area" (1976-1977 Annual Report).
The tapes range from personal recollections about being a student, staff, or faculty member at Smith to wider social and political issues of the times. The tapes record various changes in Smith College's landscape- the razing of buildings as well as changes in curriculum, departments, and staff.
CA-MS-00025
The College Hall Occupation Oral History Project was the work of two students enrolled in History 367b, Problems in American History: Autobiography, Biography, and Oral History in Twentieth Century America as taught by Maurice Isserman in the spring of 1986. The sixteen cassette tapes and two papers were given to the College Archives in the summer and fall of 1986 by the coordinators of the project, Donna Kenny '87 and Maureen Dooley Lawrence '87.
CA-MS-00090
The Smith Centennial Study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, was a project that President Mendenhall asked Jacqueline Van Voris to undertake in 1970 as an oral history project for Smith College's centennial celebration. Ms. Van Voris dedicated over four years to the project, which culminated with the publication of the book, College: A Smith Mosaic. The purpose of the study was to provide a source of information about the importance of education in women's lives. Smith alumnae were interviewed, their observations were recorded on tape and the tapes were transcribed. Questions typically asked included: "Why did you decide to go to Smith? Was it your idea? What was your academic preparation? What courses did you study? What are your remembrances of Smith? What is your general assessment of the education you received? How could college have helped you more? Have your views on education changed over the years since your graduation? Have you ever felt discriminated against because you are a woman?"
The interviews were conducted and recorded from 1971-74.
CA-MS-01216
The collection consists of audio recordings and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted by Thomas in 2002 with Jill Ker Conway and some of her colleagues for her dissertation "From Vision to Action: Jill Conway at Smith College." The focus of all interviews is Conway's presidency, but some contextual information about the individuals being interviewed is also included.
CA-MS-01192, Accession 2018-A-0120
Four oral history interviews (audio recordings and transcripts) with Smith students of color conducted by members of the Weaving Voices student group in 2015.
For more information about the project, see the Weaving Voices website.
CA-MS-01078, Accession 2012-A-0033
The Jewish Civilization (JUD 225/REL 225) oral histories were part of a course assignment and consist solely of transcripts and tapes that give student accounts of their lives as Jewish people and what being Jewish was like at Smith in 2010.
CA-MS-01214
The material in the collection is the coursework created by ENV 201/202 Environmental Integration II: Collecting and Analyzing Information in 2013-2014. The course, run by Dr. Ninian R. Stein, sought to teach students a variety of ways to gather, analyze, and present data about the environment around them.
CA-MS-01124
The Transnational Adoptee Oral History Project documents the experiences of transnationally and transracially adopted students at Smith College. These interviews are the first step in building a community of transnational, transracial adoptees at Smith. The interviews represent a chance to push back on the single-story surrounding traditional narratives of transnational and transracial adoptions, and begin to complicate the themes of “family” and “belonging” that many transnational/transracial adoptees have heard so much growing up. These interviews document a wealth of experience and knowledge that has gone undocumented thus far.