Dr. Kathleen Smythe

I love teaching and writing and learning as I pursue both. Particularly, I enjoy the challenge of addressing questions of contemporary relevance through historical investigation both in the classroom and through my writing and research. I also incorporate community- and bodily-engaged learning in many of my classes, seeking to re-connect intellectual, social, and kinesthetic learning for me and my students.

I am an African historian with years of fieldwork experience in Tanzania, East Africa. My first book, Fipa Families (2006), and a series of related articles examined the ways in which Fipa integrated and made sense of European Catholic missionaries and their values during the colonial period. This research was based on more than two hundred oral history interviews in Kifipa and Kiswahili as well as extensive archival research in Rome and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

For almost two decades, I have been interested in globalization and economic development, both the histories of these ideas and their deployment in various ways at various times. A second book, Africa's Past, Our Future, came out in 2015 with Indiana University Press and highlights ideas and institutions in African history and culture that broaden our imagination about what is possible socially, politically, and economically. A third book, Whole Earth Living: Reconnecting Earth, History, Body and Mind (Dixi Books, 2020) proposes a new sustainability framework based on long-term human interdependencies on earth and its ecosystems. The framework is built on an understanding of the losses that have occurred to human well-being with more recent historical developments in agriculture and technology.

I have been actively engaged with sustainability efforts on campus since 2007. And co-facilitated with Jay Leighter (Creighton University), the Ignatian Pedagogy for Sustainability (IPS) project within the AJCU (American Jesuit Colleges and Universities) for five years. I have been working with Ed Peck (John Carroll) and a large network-wide team to develop an AJCU Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) certificate. The certificate program is being finalized Spring 2025 and will launch Fall 2025.

I have written two books of historical themed bicycling tours in southwestern Ohio over the past half dozen years. The first is Bicycling Through Paradise: Historical Tours Around Cincinnati (2021). A second edition is due out in 2025. The second is Bicycling Through Dayton: Twenty-one Historical Cycling Tours (2025).

I am currently at work on a biography of Bonnie Mitsui (1944-2013), former founder and owner of Turner Farm in Indian Hill. Mitsui made significant and lasting contributions to the development of and interest in local, organic food in the region. She was one of the largest landowners in Indian Hill. With no practical experience in farming, she began in the late 1980s to restore the degraded soil of the farm and to sell the produce. The Farm is now a multi-faceted operation feeding thousands of people a year in a variety of ways.

I enjoy walking, biking, hiking, backpacking, gardening, cooking, writing for self-expression, and spending time with family and friends.

Expertise

African history, colonial history