Ei Smith is an Instructor in History and Social Science and a House Counselor in Fuess House. As a current National Geographic explorer, she has conducted field research along the Thai-Burma border and taught at York University in Toronto. Beyond the classroom, Smith is a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays and the Girls JV Hockey and Crew coach.
Why did you decide to teach History?
I like to call myself someone who discovered this path through being inspired by people I’ve met in my other work. I completed my doctoral degree in Toronto. That’s when I was given the chance to go into the field. [I conducted] my research along the Thai-Burma border and I worked with a feminist group there. I was inspired by the scholarship, but mostly I was inspired by the people who work there day-to-day in those refugee camps, [especially] the historians who really documented why a lot of these groups were coming to this particular refugee camp. There is a long history as to why people are displaced and why they choose to remain and the future that they seek. I chose to teach history because I want to ensure that within the classroom, students are getting a glimpse of the past, but also how it’s ever-present in what is possible.
How did your time with refugee and immigrant communities shape your thinking and teaching?
When I first began as a graduate student my mentors would say, “What’s at stake? So what?” Of course refugees have agency, they’re human beings, [and] human beings have agency. But how do they actually negotiate all these governmental powers that are trying to manage their day-to-day from their food, access to homes, and education? How do they negotiate that in nuanced ways? Working with those communities, when I read scholarly texts or when I teach it within the classroom, I’m always remembering not just the dehumanization, but the actual human agency that has molded much of this discourse that we’re discussing.
How did you become a National Geographic Explorer, and what has it added to your work as both a researcher and a teacher?
I was thinking about… the questions that I didn’t get a chance to delve into in my dissertation. During that year, I applied for grants, and National Geographic generously enabled me to go back to Myanmar at a very important time before the more authoritarian regime came back in. It was very much economically, socially, and politically a little bit more open. I got to get a glimpse of that political transformation before it shifted again. It also allowed me to present at conferences and start to disseminate my work a bit more. It was a really good reminder that even when students finish papers, if you still have questions, I’m sure your instructor would love to discuss them with you. There’s always another avenue for you to explore them, whether that’s through The Phillipian or blog posts or even academic journals.
As the course head of History 200, what do you hope Lowers gain from the course that’s different from History 100?
For History 100 and 200, we as a team take pride in the fact that we get to work with students who are entering Andover with lots of different experience with history. They might have certain mentors who have shaped their thinking, but now they’re entering this environment where we shape each other. Every instructor in the 200 level, I’m proud to say, [is] cognizant of the fact that the classroom community is shaped by the knowledge within the room and the histories that each and every student brings to the table. I believe the focus on 1400 to 1800, a very seismic time in the age of human history where there’s greater cosmopolitanism, but also problematic labor systems and dehumanization, [is] a very sensitive topic matter that you have to have a very strong classroom culture to really engage with respectfully.
How does the History of Asia elective you teach tie into your past experiences?
When I inherited this course last year, it was beautifully created [with] these roundtable discussions where students would bring in parts of their research, and would ask the classroom community to read them, and then we would discuss them together. In the summer, I was inspired to include more scholarship from South Asia and Southeast Asia, because the other course was understandably very much focused on East Asia. I felt it was important for students to explore how modernization very much impacted the region, and it wasn’t just based on certain key players. When I’m teaching it this fall, I appreciate that we do look at Singapore, and we are actually going to read a chapter from a historian who wrote about Hong Kong, and have a Zoom call with her later that week.
What do you enjoy most about coaching JV Hockey?
I love hockey. I’m from Toronto, so hockey, to me, represents something more than just a sport. It’s a way in which [my family] felt included in this Canadian culture in a very important way. My dad would watch games, and it was something that I shared with him. My sons play and my husband plays, so [I love] being a part of that, especially with the girls’ team too. We’re tough, but also we’re a family. We have this circle that we complete at the beginning of each practice where we share something, whether it’s a favorite Disney movie or some other part of what our day has been like.
What is your favorite place on campus?
My favorite place on campus is the department office in [Samuel Phillips Hall.] I have my little corral, it’s decorated, and all my favorite books are there. Sometimes a colleague will come in and will ask me an important question about their course, or they’ll suggest a reading that just really landed in their own class. I appreciate that I never feel alone, and that we create this environment where people feel that the department space is always one in which you can connect with your colleagues.
What is your favorite book?
I would say my favorite book is “Intimacies” by Katie Kitamura. It’s one that I read in my History of Asia class. For all of my Senior electives, we read a novel along with the historical work. I believe with the humanities, it’s a really important way to get a composition of the social landscape, and also allow for difficult stories to be told in a multiple set of ways. [Kitamura] was recently nominated for the Booker Prize for her latest book, “Audition.” [“Intimacies”] is incredibly spare. If you have a break and you want to really get into [reading] a little bit, it’s very accessible, but it’s rich in how she describes her characters. You don’t know the name of the protagonist. You don’t know their identity or the positionality, but you don’t need to because all you know is how she’s feeling uprooted from her sense of self, and that she’s living in the Netherlands. She’s an interpreter for the Hague, so she’s grappling with all these different parts of her career, and also what that means in a more global context.
You’re a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. What aspects of the baseball team do you admire most?
My family would say that I’m someone who gets nervous for these types of [baseball] games. I find it hard to even watch my kids play sports. The Blue Jays, I’m a fan because they are [a] pure joy [to watch]. [If] you watch the Maple Leafs compete, it’s gritty, it’s intense, and it has a different feel to the Blue Jays, who honestly look like little league kids playing for fun. That requires, first of all, an actual true love of baseball and [knowledge of] why they started to play in the first place, which is something I want to encourage Andover students to remember. They seem to understand that, yes, this is my life’s work, but I’m beyond that. I admire the team culture. It is something that I want to cultivate in my own life.
If you weren’t teaching or researching, what other passion or career path might you have pursued?
I always wanted to be a diplomat, and I actually took the Canadian examination and got a ways in, but we had moved to Andover already, and it was just a road that I wasn’t going to go down. A lesson about life is that trust the timing of your life, because if I hadn’t had that realization, I wouldn’t have started my own sort of path towards Andover. This is probably the first place in my life where I fully feel that intellectually, and with regard to my soul, I’m completely nourished.
