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Smith Hosts National Conference On Diversity Congresswoman's Papers Come to Smith |
New Book Restores Credit to Sophia Smith The Strange Disappearance of Sophia Smith, a new book by Quentin Quesnell, Roe/Straut Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, offers a detailed account of why the Smith College founder has gradually disappeared from historic documentaries of the college's origin. Published by Smith College as an outgrowth of its 1996 Sophia Smith Bicentennial celebration, the book uses a vast array of hitherto unpublished documents and manuscripts, many from the Smith College Archives, to tell how and why credit for the college's origins shifted from Smith toward her pastor and adviser, the Rev. John M. Greene. Quesnell reveals that Greene, who outlived Sophia Smith by almost 50 years, spent an extraordinary amount of time and energy during his last 30 years opposing the college's first president, L. Clark Seelye, asserting his own role in founding the college and rewriting pertinent documents. Greene wrote most fully about his part in the college's early years in a memoir published posthumously in 1926. "By the middle of the twentieth century, the woman who had been honored in the 1870s as a wise and creative founder came to seem something quite different-distant, irrelevant, a little embarrassing-while the real credit for the conception and the planning of the college went to the man behind the woman, her pastor and friend, John M. Greene," writes Quesnell. In recording the history of Sophia Smith's receding place in Smith lore, Quesnell has penned the most comprehensive biography of Smith to date. He writes about her politically active family, political interests, social circle, travels, correspondence and financial and business acumen. He details the favorite newspapers, magazines and books she bought for herself and for the Smith Literary Society as well as her interest in women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott and other leaders of the American women's movement. The book also provides a detailed study of Sophia Smith's will, particularly of her intentions for Smith College as an institution distinct from other women's colleges. Quesnell, who taught in Smith's religion department from 1977 through 1996 and is the author of eight books in that field, received the college's Honored Professor Award in 1991. Much of his spare time has been devoted to his hobby of local history, and he has served as chair of the Northampton Historical Commission. The Strange Disappearance of Sophia Smith is available for $35 at the Grécourt Bookshop. |
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